


The Identity Code

by betabee



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, superhero au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-28
Updated: 2015-12-15
Packaged: 2018-05-03 20:09:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 26
Words: 51,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5305160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betabee/pseuds/betabee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world has superheroes and supervillains alike, and no-one knows their names... a piece of information that would have been quite helpful for Belle and Robert to know a few months back before they learned who they ended up sharing a house with. Oops...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Roommate

Belle didn’t know quite how she had ended up as the live-in part time maid  and roommate of Robert Gold.

Well, she did- she couldn’t quite afford the rent for an apartment within walking distance of the library she was now employed at, but after seeing a sign in the window of Mr Gold’s pawn shop advertising for a spare room rent-free in return for cooking and cleaning, she quickly ventured inside to ask about it.

It turned out that the sign had been up there for a good six months; that she was the first person to inquire about it; and that she would be living with Mr Gold, who, after a string of firing employed housekeepers, was at his wits end. He couldn’t keep his apartment clean with his rather nasty ankle injury, and simply didn’t have the time to look into employing someone else. He thought offering a spare room in a good central location of the city would be enough to entice someone to do the work for him, but alas, his reputation as a horrible person was quite widespread throughout the city, and no-one would touch the offer of living in the same house as Mr Gold with a bargepole.

Belle didn’t agree with that assessment at the time of inquiring, and still couldn’t agree after living with him for six months. He was a very considerate roommate; he covered all the utilities and rent, and kept the table and kitchen tidy where he could. He did the washing up every other night, and was a gentleman. She had hardly a complaint about the apartment she now shared with him, which was clean and tidy and pleasant to reside in, despite her father’s complaints (why was she living with a pawnbroker who owned several buildings and had threatened to evict her relatives in the city a few years back?) and her friends’ complaints (I know he’s loaded, and I know it’s a penthouse, but _really?_ ) and the complaints of anyone who even had a passing acquaintance with the man (Mr Gold?! _That’s_ who you’re living with?!).

She was not the slightest bit worried, for several reasons.

One, the middle-aged pawnbroker, despite his reputation (which he seemed to encourage) could hardly hurt a fly. He even suggested that they get a pet sometime soon if she was willing.

Two, she had deduced, through careful observation, through the fresh flowers left around the house every day, and the fridge stocked with her favourite treats, and the elegantly handwritten notes left whenever he went out unexpectedly, that Mr Gold, who had insisted after a few months that she call him Robert (and she was one of the only people who she knew who called him that) had a rather large crush on her.

Three, she wasn’t quite the weak and small librarian that the people around her saw. Far from it.

She was a superhero.


	2. The Heroine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We are introduced to Belle's life, both the human and superhuman sides...

Her day, as normal, started with wandering through into the kitchenette, where Robert was, as usual on Tuesdays, making pancakes.

“Mornin’…” He muttered as she walked past to the fridge to get a glass of orange juice, scottish brouge thick with sleepiness.

“Morning, Robert.” She replied, pausing to gulp down a mouthful of juice. She turned to regard him, noting the usual impeccable suit and tie underneath the apron he was sporting. “Busy day at the shop today?”

“Pretty busy, yes.” He replied. “There’s several customers with appointments, so I shan’t be back until quite late. I’ve boxed up the leftovers from the casserole from last night, they should be in the fridge, so you can reheat one when you’re ready.” He trailed off as he realised he was babbling, looking down at the pancake he was currently attending to. She watched him blush slightly from embarassment, before moving around him to collect the plate already with a couple of pancakes on it, lemon juice and sugar already arranged on the side.

She ate quickly, garbled words of thanks escaping her lips as she scoffed the pancakes down before she zipped back through to her bedroom to change, ready to start the day. She wasn’t the only one in the house made nervous by the other’s presence, for similar reasons. His regular habit of wearing suits no matter the time of day often meant she spent several minutes of her time trying to unglue her eyes from his figure. She knew he had a crush on her, as she did on him, but wasn’t quite sure how to take it to the next step.

She found her ten minute walk down to the library relaxing. Living in the centre of the city was very convenient indeed, but she found she missed the longer walks she used to have to take at university, where she had lived off campus and didn’t own a car. It had given her time to think, time to calm her racing thoughts, ready for the day.

The library was closed, as usual at this time of the morning, and she looked around carefully for observers before using a key to let herself in, locking the door behind her. The laminate flooring echoed as her heels clicked with every step, and she crossed between the books to the elevator at the back, hidden behind the science fiction section. Removing a keycard from her purse, she swiped it before entering the lift, and waited.

The lift doors closed. Lights flashed, and her stomach dropped as the metal box she stood in went a lot faster than any normal lift should go.

The doors on this lift didn’t open automatically, giving her time to slip the simple cotton black face mask from her purse and over her eyes, masking her identity, before she pressed the button to let her out and into the superhero HQ.

People with superpowers, both heroes and villains alike, were very protective of their identities, especially in the day and age of social media, where a single picture of a super without their mask on could be circulated around the internet in seconds, never to be secret again. Even if they weren’t targeted by their fellow supers, people with superpowers and their families often had very _interesting_ genetic markers and abilities, which no-one wanted falling into the wrong hands.

When people had first started exhibiting such special abilities, they had banded together to keep themselves and their families safe, creating a code of honour to keep their identities and the identities of their families a closely guarded secret. The government weren’t pleased that they couldn’t keep tabs on the people with dangerous powers, but were overruled quickly in the ensuing battle. The people didn’t want their friends, their families, to have their privacy overlooked in the search to keep the supers safe. The government eventually cooperated, even setting up a monthly masque ball in the city hall for heroes and villains alike to meet in peace, for the purposes of keeping tabs on the number of supers and their possible movements.

The simplest masks, black and cotton and one-size-fits-all were standard issue, easily found in government buildings for anyone who wanted to register as a super and thus practice and use their abilities in secret. She wore one now as she entered the lobby of the superhero HQ- it was too dangerous to keep her custom-made mask at home, no matter how much she trusted Robert. Her line of work meant that if anyone discovered who she was by accident, it could escalate quickly. There were measures put in place by the government to put outed supers and their families into witness protection programs, but she really didn’t want to have to leave the city yet.

She strode across the lobby and towards the lifts taking heroes to their own equipment rooms, punching in a passcode and waiting as the lift lurched and took her to the small room where she kept her supersuits and masks. It was barely big enough to swing a cat in, but felt cosy rather than claustrophobic. She shucked her blouse and skirt in favour of a skintight suit (deep green and warm dark brown) and a battle mask (fitted to her face, specially made by Granny, the resident mask-maker and one of the few people in the HQ to know what she looked like). The mask, while flat, had an intricate pattern of vines and thorns covering it, designed in honour of the moniker she had chosen the city to know her by when she went out to save them- Thorn.

After stowing her civilian clothes and plain mask in a corner, she re-entered the waiting lift and made her way back to the lobby, before crossing to the reception desk. A blonde girl in a white, lace-covered mask sat behind, tapping away at a keyboard with manicured fingers. Cinderella wasn’t a super, but it was policy of the HQ for all people in the building to hide their identities with masks and codenames, just in case.

“Hey, Cindy.” Belle said, leaning against the desk. “Have Snow and Charming made it in yet?”

“Oh, hey Thorn.” Cinderella replied, glancing up as she continued to tap. “I think I saw them come in while you were changing. They’re in conference room 3.”

“Great, thanks.” She flashed her a smile, before walking across to the lifts to the conference rooms, all situated on the upper floors of the building, walking at a slow and leisurely pace.

The conference room, as Cinderella had said, contained both Snow White (dressed in white, with powers of weather control) and Prince Charming (dressed like a fairytale prince, with a light brown mask and bright blue eyes, and powers of super strength and indestructibility). It also contained, seated at the head of the table, the Blue Fairy, the head of their particular group of superheroes. Her powers consisted of flight and invulnerability, but she had a clear head on her shoulders and was a veteran super which many of the younger heroes were happy to follow.

“Ah, I was wondering when you would get here!” Charming greeted her as she entered. “How are you, Thorn? Worn out any more pairs of shoes to get here?”

“Very funny, Charming.” Belle replied as she wended across the room to take a seat near her boss. Belle’s power was super speed, or more accurately, a personal local space-time distortion which meant she could fit an extra few hours into the space of a few seconds if she pleased. It wasn’t a limitless power, but it was useful. Her mother, who used to be a superhero, had had the same ability.

Snow and Charming took their seats across the table from her, and they all looked at Blue expectantly as she shuffled her notes.

After a few moments, and clearing her throat, Blue spoke.

“Thank you all for coming.” She smiled at them, each in turn. “I’d like to commend you all for your fabulous work on the Queen of Hearts case. Her trial is next week, and in the meantime she is safely behind bars, thanks to your dedicated work.”

“We were just doing our job, Blue. It’s no matter.” Snow said.

“We’d been trying to bring her down for months, Snow. Months! And then when you three joined the case we had enough information to get the police to a position in which to arrest her in the space of a week. You’ve all done an excellent job.

However,” She said, getting up and going over to the computer, bringing up a presentation on screen, “We now have another job that requires your skills.” Blue clicked, and a series of pictures crossed the screen, depicting various robberies and thefts from the perspective of grainy CCTV cameras, a shadowy figure featuring in all of them.

“Who’s this, then?” Belle asked, getting up and approaching the screen to look at the grainy pictures closer.

“He goes by the name ‘The Spinner’ at the moment. However, I have encountered someone with very similar abilities a while back, going by the name of ‘The Dark One’.”

Belle didn’t recognise the first name, but her head whipped around at the mention of the second.

“The Dark One? Really? But didn’t he…?”

Blue nodded. “The Dark One died many years ago. I killed him myself. And yes, this is the same Dark One who was your mother’s adversary for many years.”

Belle looked back at the pictures with renewed interest. “There’s only a few ways for two people to have exactly the same powers. We can dismiss that someone swapped powers with the Dark One, since you were there when he died. That leaves either that one of his relatives has decided to take up supervillainy, or…”

“Or… the Dark One is still alive.” Snow ended her sentence in a slightly horrified voice.

“Exactly.” Blue said. “We will need to keep the revelation that the Dark One and the Spinner might be the same person under wraps until we have concrete evidence, however. There’s no reason to incite public panic at this stage in proceedings, but we need answers, and fast.” Blue walked back over to her notes, and handed a bundle of papers to Belle.

“I’ve set up your computer with all the Dark One and Spinner case notes. The Spinner has been operating for about the last six months or so, but has stuck to theft and robbery so far, not enough to get on major public radar or on the radar of the major supervillains in the area. Speaking of which, how is the Queens of Darkness case coming on?”

“Mulan’s taken over a lot of that one.” Belle replied. “We should have a fix on their lair within a week, after which we will need to organise a strike quickly before they catch on.”

“Good. I’d like to put Mulan in full control of that case so you can work on this one, if that’s okay, Thorn.”

“Sure.” Belle replied. “I’ll have a look over the case files in my research room, and then go try to track him down for a talk sooner rather than later.”

Blue looked a bit concerned at the mention of talking with him, but gave a nod of consent. “Just be careful, Thorn- he’s a trickster. His illusions only disrupt your sight, so you might want to do some blind fighting practice, but he has telekinesis as well, and a very quick mind. Be on your guard.”

“I will be, don’t worry.” She said, making her way to the lift that would take her to her research room, Snow and Charming two steps behind. “I’ve got the fairytale couple in case things go wrong. We’ll be fine.”

Blue nodded, and then left them to go research.


	3. The Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thorn encounters her new nemesis for the first time.

She had spent a good few hours in the monitoring room, getting reports from hours and days and weeks ago that tracked the spinner’s movements. She wasn’t kidding when she had told Snow that she needed the room to herself; she spun across the room at frightening speeds that seemed slow to her. Her power of superspeed could only be used for a limited time at full speed and full action, but the slower she went, the longer she could speed up for. At present, she zoomed around the room at half her usual speed for a good 6 hours of subjective time, flicking through newspaper reports and using the computer that the heroes had acquired for her specially, capable of processing the data she wanted at her speeds.

A few seconds later, she emerged from the room she had been working in for the last few hours, and handed a stunned looking Snow a note.

“I’ve compiled a report about his last known movements and probable next targets, but he’s probably going to be at the halfpenny bridge in half an hour to stop the train there, so we really need to get moving.”

Snow dropped the report handed to her with surprise. “They weren’t lying when they said you were quick, Thorn!” Belle huffed at Snow’s remark, raising an eyebrow as Snow continued, “How on earth did you work out where he was going to go for next?”

“It’s quite simple, if you’ve had the time to look at all the facts properly.” Belle replied, picking up the report and walking at a gentle pace over to a table nearby, spreading out pieces of paper to illustrate her next words.

“I’ve looked over his known movements and actions for the last six months. He likes to hit the places where he can acquire new technologies to augment his own abilities, or those of others; science parks, universities, shipments of electronics parts or of patents for new machines. He’s trying to discover something, maybe a way to defeat another super, maybe a way to take over the world- who knows. But he clearly doesn’t have the time or resources to discover the technology or information he wants on his own, so he’s stealing from scientists and engineers to do so.

I then ran through a list of local technology and science institutions that he hasn’t attacked yet, as well as cross-referencing the locations of all the attacks to work out roughly where he’s working from. All his hits have been within the city itself so far, so he can’t be willing to travel outside its bounds for some reason or another- possibly the jurisdiction of the particular identity code limits of this city, I don’t know. The only major science company he hasn’t tried to break into yet has been Cricket Enterprises, the biochemistry union, and they have a shipment of new synthetic materials entering the city by train in the next half an hour. The train’s path is mostly underground, below the city, but will be exposed on it’s entry point to the city-”

“The halfpenny bridge.” Charming, who had wandered over during her explanation, interjected.

“Exactly!” Belle replied. Charming was quite smart, beneath the fair facade- one of the reasons she’d taken a liking to him during training. He felt like a friendly big brother.

“We’d better set off soon if we want to get there in time to intercept him then.” Snow said. “Fancy a lift?”

“Well, I can’t run everywhere, can I?” Belle replied as she, Charming and Snow headed out of the doors of the HQ and into the open air.

She still wasn’t used to being lifted into the air by Snow’s control of the winds. It was very unnerving; she felt her stomach swoop as they rose into the air on Snow’s winds, one particular swoop above the building tops causing Belle to feel very nauseous.

She would, she decided, never enjoy flying. The lack of control over her body made her very nervous indeed.

Thankfully, they were only in the air for ten minutes, their route over the tops of the skyscrapers shortening the journey considerably. Belle could, of course, have run the entire way in a fraction of the time, but that would have rendered her exhausted and mostly powerless for her first meeting with a notorious supervillain, a prospect she wasn’t willing to encounter this early into her career.

Snow set them down on a strut running across the middle of the bridge before rising into the air by their sides gracefully. The train wasn’t due for several minutes, and she sat down, but Charming stayed standing, back ramrod straight and scanning their surroundings with a worried twitch in his cheek.

“Are you okay, Charming?” Belle asked. “He’s not going to be here for a little while longer, you know.”

“Oh, I beg to differ, dearie.” The sudden unexpected twittering voice caused her to stop time almost on instinct, her head whipping around to look at the newcomer.

It was definitely the Spinner, alright. The descriptions in the reports barely did his illusion of his form justice. They had mentioned scales, and curly hair, and leather, and spikes. They didn’t mention how the late afternoon sunlight glinted off the golden scales, giving the illusion of a dragon in human guise. They didn’t mention the riotous curls framing his face (old and wrinkled and _handsome_?) of a light brown with grey hairs wending through the roots. They didn’t mention the tight pants hugging his legs, or the coat that looked like it was torn from a dragon’s back, or the black claws on the ends of his fingertips, or… or…

Or the amber in his eyes, gazing intently into hers as she lifted her gaze.

Time slowly started again, the imp-like man slowly unfolding himself from his seat on the strut on the opposite side of the bridge, and Belle copied his movements with a wary eye on what he was doing. Charming retained his icy glare at the man, but she didn’t notice.

“I take it you’re the Spinner?” she asked, voice wary and low in her practiced American accent.

He gave a small flourishing bow.

“I am he. And you are…?”

“I’m Thorn. Daughter of Rose.”

His eyes lit up at the mention of her mother’s superhero title.

“Rose’s daughter, eh? I remember her.” He tilted his head, considering her in the most disconcerting way, his gaze almost cutting through to her soul. “Are you just as prickly?”

“Pricklier.” She replied, eliciting a smirk from him, a quirk of his mouth that did funny things to her insides. She stopped time again to consider this important information, to _think_.

She had barely met the Spinner; they had spent less than a minute in each other’s company. However, that was subjective. She had just spent the last several hours (from her perspective, at least) pouring over everything the heroes knew about him, and had come to several conclusions.

He was very intelligent, for one. Not one of his hits was made where he would be at a disadvantage; there was time between when he would attack, but the attacks attributed to him we precise, clean, and no more was taken than seemed to be necessary to his plans.

He didn’t seem to be affiliated with any of the other villain factions, either. Sure, he was occasionally spotted around the city in the company of the Hatter or the Queens of Darkness, but didn’t seem to be working with either. When Ursula had been questioned a few weeks ago, she denied all involvement with him, other than a deal or two.

And then there were the deals. Word had got around the city, amongst the poor and the desperate souls, that anything could be obtained, anything could be stolen- for a price. That price, however, was often in being a distraction, an aide, an assistant in the Spinner’s plans, which sometimes left them on the run from the police. The suspects, when captured and questioned, denied any long term involvement with the Spinner either.

She needed to find out his long term goal sooner rather than later, she decided, but that was going to be difficult when looking at him gave her butterflies, twisting up her stomach in knots. Belle had already known she was more drawn to intellectuals than to more… _masculine_ men, but seeing the fierce intellect behind the scaly mask observing her was slightly too much.

In less than a minute of meeting the Spinner, she was attracted to him.

Well this was going to make hunting him down and putting him in jail interesting.

She forced herself to start time up again. Her speed, while useful for taking time out to think things through, would be needed later in the fight- and she was almost certain there was going to be a fight. At least, after the banter was out the way and when the train arrived.

He seemed like the type to banter, which was a good thing for any superhero.

“Well, I’m honoured to make your acquaintance, rosebud.” He replied as time started up again. “And who, may I ask, are your guard dogs?” He gestured, first to Charming (whose nostrils flared and stance tightened) and then Snow (hovering in the air behind them, swooping closer as the Spinner spoke).

“Snow White and Prince Charming, if you must know.” Belle answered before either of her companions could butt in. The fight would start too soon if they interfered.

“Ah. I see they’re taking a fairytale theme down at the registrar this year.” His voice was high, twittering, and Charming stepped forward threateningly before Belle but a warning hand in front of his chest, stopping him.

“And who are you meant to be? Rumplestiltskin?” Belle replied, a laugh trying to escape, quickly eclipsed by the supervillain’s hearty chuckle, quite unlike the high pitched giggles the reports had said to expect. Maybe she’d caught him off guard.

“Only for you, dearie. Now, are you going to let your guard dogs have at me?” he raised his hands threateningly, and she glanced up the track. The train wouldn’t be here for a good five minutes yet.

Her distraction cost her dear. Within moments she let out a shriek of surprise as the ground fell out from underneath her, and she floated up into the air over the dark waters of the river below. Snow started forward, but her eyes scanned across the space Belle now floated in, clearly not seeing her.

“Well well, looks like the guard dogs can’t keep you that safe, can they, dearie?” He asked, voice high and mocking as she hung, suspended in the air by his power.

She had forgotten he had telekinesis sufficient to lift a person up. Damn. And he was clearly hiding her position from her friends with his illusions, judging by their bewildered expressions. They both closed in on the Spinner, menacing looks on their faces, but he raised a finger to halt them as they advanced.

“Ah ah ah. You wouldn’t want my concentration to _slip_ , now, would you? Not while your little friend’s life hangs in the balance? Huh?” He gave a mad giggle at their expressions, higher and much more like the reports had mentioned.

Enraged, Charming stepped across the track, starting towards the Spinner with murderous intent.

The train came out of nowhere, slamming into him as he crossed the track. Snow let out a gasp from her position floating near the bridge, but Belle could see anger flash across her face. Belle was now floating on the Spinner’s side of the bridge, and watched helplessly as Snow flew over to her side of the bridge, the Spinner watching carefully as Snow came closer.

“You’re not going to be able to help your friend, you know.” He twittered at Snow.

“Yes she is.” Belle interrupted. He turned to face her with a glare.

“You know, you’re meant to shut up when your life hangs in the balance, do you know that?” he grumbled.

“Yeah, but you’re forgetting something.”

He raised an eyebrow. “What exactly am I forgetting, _dearie_?”

“To pay attention.” She said, as Snow gathered the cloud of lightning and threw it at the Spinner.

He stumbled back with a cry, head colliding with a crack against one of the metal pillars holding the bridge up, and the telekinetic hold on her was released.

She only fell for a few seconds, but grabbed a few extra to change her undignified tumble into a graceful dive. The icy waters below parted smoothly, and she stopped time to haul herself out of the cold but mostly still depths before she sped across the surface to the shore.

Time started again as she reached solid ground, and she turned back to watch the bridge, wringing out her wet ponytail absentmindedly as she watched the Spinner rise from the bridge and fly away at speeds Snow couldn’t match. She tried, the winds taking her a few kilometres upstream, before giving up, turning around, and flying down towards Belle.

“What was that?! Thorn, what was that?” Snow shouted at her as she landed a few feet away. “We were meant to stop him, not bloody introduce ourselves like we’re at a fairytale ball!!”

“We did stop him, if you don’t remember the important part where he didn’t get onto the train but stopped to fight us.” Belle replied, an eerie calm floating through her as she thought. “I think we also confirmed that the Dark One is less dead than we’d all like.”

“What?!” Snow asked, wrenching Belle’s shoulder around to look at her, confusion and fury warring in the eyes behind the white mask.

“Did you see how he reacted when I mentioned my mother, Snow?” Belle asked, gripping Snow’s shoulders in turn, a strange giddiness flooding through her as her mind worked out the logical conclusion. “Rose and the Dark One fought many times over the years- they joined the super community at about the same time, and were almost friends if it weren’t for the fact they were on opposing sides. The Spinner clearly remembers her. Blue’s hypothesis was right!”

Snow gasped as her mind caught up, and she and Belle danced around on the sand in giddy happiness, before Snow pulled them to a sudden, abrupt stop.

“Wait- we should probably go and retrieve Charming sooner rather than later. Do you think he’s still stuck to the front of that train?”

“Your boyfriend may be reckless and invulnerable, but he’s not stupid. He’ll probably be waiting with the train just in case the Spinner tries to double back to get what he came for.” Belle replied. “Shall I get us there?” she said, lifting her arms out. Snow clambered into Belle’s arms (she gave an oof of protest at the weight; her strength training clearly needed more work) and Belle concentrated before she started running, Snow’s arms like a vice around her neck and head tucked against her shoulder.

Carrying another person at high velocity was not Belle’s favourite pasttime to say the least, especially if she ran while doing so. She was severely out of breath by the time she staggered to a stop outside the train station, almost dropping Snow into her waiting boyfriend’s arms before collapsing on the surprisingly comfortable platform floor. She watched as if from a distance as Snow brought Charming up to speed on what he had missed, but the words were drowned out by the pounding of blood past her ears.

After a few minutes, she sat up slowly, head swimming, and Charming came over, kneeling and pressing a hand to her forehead in concern.

“Burnout again?” He asked. She nodded slowly, and he quickly scooped her up off the platform floor, Snow talking into her phone to summon more supers to the scene.

“I’ll take her back to the HQ, she can sleep it off there.” She heard Charming’s voice vibrate against her chest, and he set off through the city streets at a jog, the gentle rocking lulling her into unconsciousness. 


	4. The Question

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the first battle...

She came to with a groan, head pounding. Her eyes cracked open, and she groped with a hand to check that her mask was still comfortably in place before looking around. Charming was sitting by the bedside, a look of concern on his face fading with her signs of consciousness.

“Hey, Snow! She’s awake!” He called across the room, and quickly the white-masked woman came into view, tutting as Belle tried to sit up.

“You shouldn’t be trying to get up again just yet, Thorn. It looks like you did a good number on overexerting yourself again!” She sighed. “What were you thinking?”

“I was just trying to get you there as fast as possible, Snow.” Belle mumbled as they finally let her sit up. The headache was slowly fading. “Did he show up again?”

“Yep, a few seconds after Charming cleared out with you. Thankfully I was able to hold him off until the others arrived, and he scarpered when he saw he was outnumbered.”

“He’ll probably try to get the new materials again, then, but probably not today. Did you bring orange juice?” Charming obligingly handed her a cup with a plastic lid and a straw, and she quickly removed the lid to gulp it down at speed.

She was quite used to exhausting her abilities; it had happened in training all the time as she and the supers around her had experimented with how fast she could go and how long for, but using her abilities too much had the cost of sending her into a state of hypoglycemia and/or exhaustion when she stopped. Snow and Charming knew the drill by now- taking her to the infirmary where she could get an IV drip of sugars if necessary, and time to sleep it off if not.

Once the cup of orange juice was finished, she grabbed for the plate of biscuits on the bedside table, quickly scoffing those down as well. Between crumb-filled mouthfuls, she asked, “Did you see which direction he left the station from?”

“He headed west, towards the docks, but we were busy trying to stop the countdown on an explosive he left to track him further. He seemed to lose interest in us when it turned out you weren’t there, for some reason.”

“Weird.” Belle shrugged. “Well, there’s not much we can do about that today, to be honest. I guess I’ll head home, if Doc says I can go.”

Snow nodded, and motioned for the resident doctor to come check her vitals. Doc was used to dealing with her hypo episodes, and quickly pronounced that there was little more he could do to help her here. She was discharged from the infirmary with little fanfare, and headed to the changing rooms with Snow and Charming at her side.

She quickly changed back into the clothes she had worn that morning, wincing slightly at a graze she hadn’t noticed on her knee as she pulled her tights back on. Clearly collapsing that fast onto the train platform earlier hadn’t been quite as good for her as she’d thought at the time.

The supersuit from the day got unceremoniously tossed into a laundry basket, where it would be cleaned overnight, and she attacked her hair with a brush before leaving for the lobby again. She still smelt faintly of brine from her dip in the river, but there wasn’t much to be done about that- she really needed to bring some perfume into her changing room someday soon.

Her simple black mask was the last item to be donned, and she retraced her steps back to the elevator that would take her to the library, replacing the mask in her purse as it rattled under the city. The library was silent and dark once again- she had clearly been asleep for a while. Sometimes she arrived back while the library was still open, allowing her to do her ‘cover’ job for once, but more often than not it was closed if she came in after a battle that required overusing her abilities. She quietly let herself out the building, strolling gently down the street back to the apartment, hiding her winces as the tights shifted against the grazes. Maybe trousers were in order for tomorrow’s outfit.

The lights were off when she arrived at the penthouse- clearly Robert was having a late night at the shop, as he liked to on weekdays. Clicking the lights on, she saw a new bouquet of carnations sitting in a vase on the kitchen table, a bright array of colours which he must have dropped off sometime during the day. Belle took a moment to admire them before wandering over to heat up some casserole, a small smile on her face.

She heard the door latch click, a key turning in the lock just as she was sitting down to eat her portion of casserole. Getting up, she put the other portion in the microwave as Robert walked in, cane clicking on the floor and a certain heaviness in his step indicating the weariness of a long day.

“Busy day?” she asked quietly as he plopped down into a chair next to hers at the table. She looked around as his cane clattered against the floor, watching him lean back with a sigh.

“Yeah…” He muttered, bringing his hands up to rub his eyes, stretching his arms with a yawn. Belle was about to turn back to the heating casserole when the edge of his hair moved, revealing a streak of red across his forehead, close to the hairline.

“Oh my god! What happened to you?!” She said, walking over quickly. He looked confused, but hissed as her hand brushed the hair from his forehead and traced the cut there. “How did you get this?” She asked.

“I… I tripped over the corner of the carpet in my shop earlier, just before I left for home. I think I hit my head on the corner of one of the cabinets- you know, the glass ones with jewellry in. I didn’t realise it had broken the skin. Sorry.”

She tutted, then quickly went over to the box of medicine and bandages tucked into a corner of the counters, retrieving an antiseptic wipe and a large plaster before returning to him, dragging a chair over to inspect his head better.

“You don’t have to do this. I can treat it myself…” he protested as she moved his head to dab at it with the wipe, causing a small amount of fresh blood to well up and a wince to pass his gritted teeth. His protests died as she continued to gently clean the wound (it was unreasonably full of dirt for one acquired inside a shop, but she wasn’t going to start an argument over how he _actually_ got it- probably an unruly tenant who wouldn’t pay up) and soon she was opening the plaster and gently smoothing it across the wound.

Before she could second-guess herself, she pressed a light kiss to his forehead before returning her seat to its usual place. “There. All better.”

He blushed. “Thank you.” He muttered, before slowly limping across the kitchen to retrieve his now cooked casserole from the microwave.

They ate in silence for a few minutes, Belle almost wolfing her casserole down (she was evidently still recovering from her earlier blackout; she needed the fuel). She was about to get up and take her plate to the sink to wash when Robert cleared his throat. She stopped getting up and looked at him expectantly as he seemed to struggle for words.

“Listen…” He eventually stammered out. “I… I was wondering… wouldyouliketogooutwithmesometime?” the words rushed past his lips at almost incomprehensible speed. He looked slightly scared as she paused to decide on how to answer. After a seconds silence, he continued, “I mean, you don’t have to if you don’t want to, I just thought… I mean, I like spending time with you, I understand if you don’t feel the same way-”

She cut him off mid-sentence with a finger to his lips and a smile. “Robert?”

“Yes?” He almost whimpered.

“I would love to go out to dinner with you.”

The tension remained in his shoulders. “You… you would?”

She nodded. “Tell you what- there’s a really nice place around the corner from the library that’s just sprung up, it’s run by this very nice italian gentleman called Marco.”

“I know of it. I own the building, actually.” He smiled, a small, hesitant smile.

“So? Would you like to go check it out?”

“I’d love to.” His smile widened, crinkles appearing at the corners of his eyes. “Is Thursday good? I can reserve us a table.”

She ran through her schedule in her mind. She was busy on call on Wednesday, where she would stay overnight at HQ to answer any urgent distress calls from the police or the people of the city concerning the local supervillains. Nothing was happening Thursday, however.

“Thursday is good.” She said, smiling back. “Is half seven okay with you?”

“Fine by me.” He replied, before standing up slowly, reaching for his cane. “I’ll get the washing up done, if you want to go read for a while before bed. What book do you have today?”

“I’m still working through Frank Herbert’s _Dune_. It’s really good- I like how in-depth it gets exploring the world around it and the interplanetary space politics, but it’s long. Really long.”

He chuckled, a rich, warm sound that she could listen to for hours. “I’d better not interrupt your reading time, then.” He waved her through the door as he turned on the taps. “Enjoy your book!”

She smiled, then made her way through to the sitting room to her book. The silly little grin didn’t leave her face for a good half an hour.


	5. The Unexpected

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, they didn't see that coming...

The next few days were a flurry of investigation and dealing with minor criminals inbetween; she brought in a group of drug dealers she had been tracking for a while, and was about to head out of HQ to go home ready for her dinner with Robert when a call came in.

“Hey, Belle.” She heard Robert say as soon as she switched on her phone.

“Hi. How are you?” Belle replied, careful not to use names and wandering away from the people around her.

“Good, thanks. Listen, something’s come up with one of my tenants. I’m not going to be able to make it to dinner tonight. I’m sorry.”

She blinked in surprise. Normally Robert was very particular about how long his duties as a landlord would take up his time; if it was after hours, he would often send his assistant Mr Dove to deal with it. It must be serious if it meant that it interrupted their date.

“It’s fine, Robert. We can reschedule. Maybe later in the week? Friday or something?”

“Sounds good.” He replied. “I’ll talk to you when I get home, okay? Have a good evening.”

“You too.” She replied, before hanging up and replacing her phone in her pocket, turning away from the entrance to the changing rooms and back to the research rooms. If she wasn’t going to be able to meet Robert for dinner, she might as well get a bit more work done on the Spinner case.

Logging on, she checked the recent reports from local technology companies, scanning the articles scrolling past with practiced ease.

She nearly didn’t see the article about another shipment from Cricket Enterprises. She had a double take, before scrolling back up and opening the page. It took her a few seconds to read the information, but soon enough she was almost running out the building in her haste. She had to slow down to allow the automatic doors to let her through, and bumped into Blue as she exited through the front door, mask still on, and mumbled a quick apology before racing down the sunset-lit streets.

It took her a matter of seconds to get to her destination- the back gates of Cricket Enterprises’ factory on the edge of town, a loading van waiting and the door slowly opening as she traced the perimeter at almost the speed of light. The synthetic materials from earlier in the week were being transfered to a more secure facility out of town, and the Spinner would inevitably make another attempt to acquire them.

He didn’t appear to have arrived yet. It was hard to tell- she knew that invisibility was included in his abilities (in the same vein as the illusions he used to disguse his true face) but there were ways of overcoming that.

Time started up again as she positioned herself by the back door of the building, watching the horizon for when he might appear.

Her intuition was quickly proven correct. A slight shimmer in the air at the entrance of the compound had her slowing time down to rush over. Hand passing through the air, she quickly found one of his limbs, tracing until she had an arm around his throat and another arm pulling one of his back.

She let time go again.

The man she was holding quickly shimmered into visibility, but maintained his grasp on the illusion of his appearance. He tried to twist his head to look at her, but let out a gasp of pain when she pulled his arm further back.

“Don’t try anything.” She hissed in his ear. “I know why you’re here.”

“Oh, you’re quick.” He wheezed out, a tone of admiration in his voice. “Just like your mother. Tell me, did you bring any of your lackeys with you today?”

She gave a bark of laughter. “What makes you think I need lackeys, Spinner?”

“Oh… maybe _this_.” A sudden burst of telekinetic force radiating from his body sent her stumbling back, but she slowed time down a second after feeling it. She stumbled back, but then got up again and headed around to place herself between the back door and the Spinner before letting time flow again.

It was strange to see the telekinetic force that had been directed at her woosh out from him, a wave of air travelling in all directions and knocking over a few bins at the other end of the compound. He was powerful, alright, but could have done a lot worse with a more directed blast.

His eyes refocused on her, and he smiled.

“This takes me back, I must say. You think you can stop me, rosebud? I do have many more years experience of battling your powers than you have of battling mine.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Spinner. My mother trained me- taught me all the tips and tricks for using my powers to the best of my ability, including those learned from fighting you. I listened to every story, learned every detail of what you can do and how, _Dark One_. I have the advantage here.”

He spread his arms in a placating gesture. “It seems we are at an impasse then, my lady. I do have a question though, before we get to the unnecessary collision of our abilities.” His voice was high and mocking.

“Yes?” she spat through gritted teeth, feet in a fighting stance.

“Are you one of the superheroes who blindly follows the Blue Fairy or not?”

She looked at him, questioningly. “Is this about your supposed ‘death’? What happened between the two of you?”

“I won’t tell you unless you prove to me that you can listen, dearie.” He said, his voice a lot more serious and dropping an octave or two, a hint of roughness of a different accent on the edges of his vowels.

“And how, may I ask, would I do that, hmm?” she said. He raised an eyebrow. “It’s not as if we’re in a position where we can trust each other to tell the truth. But I don’t know why Blue would have let you get away- she would have not said you were dead all those years ago if she didn’t mean it.”

He looked surprised at her assessment. “There’s not many at the HQ who would admit that Blue got something wrong. Maybe we can come to… an understanding, of sorts?”

She scoffed. “No matter what Blue has done, you’re still trying to steal things, to disrupt the city, to build _something_. If you want me to believe you on Blue you’ll need to trust me with your plans in return.”

“Ah, well that’s not going to happen anytime soon, rosebud. I will get those materials, any way possible, even if it means going through a potential ally or two.”

Suddenly, his eyes flickered to over her shoulder, to the door. She watched him, carefully, stance protective as two workers pushed the door open from the other side, carrying a large sealed box with them.

“It’s now or never, then.” She said, eyes firmly fixed on the Spinner, waiting for him to make a move.

Instead of using his powers alone, he rushed her manually this time, attempting to wrestle past her to get to the box itself before it was loaded onto the van. With a wave of telekinetic power the two men carrying the box fell to the ground, unconscious, but she hardly noticed, her attention focused on stopping the Spinner closing in on the box and distracting him from it.

They wrestled for a good few minutes, and she did somewhat better than he did; she managed to evade most of his strikes by slowing time down to get herself out the way, but he did get a few hits in, using his telekinesis to hit her, or using his illusions to disguise his movements until it was too late. The illusions didn’t have much effect, given how close they were, but the slabs of air battering her back and forth did. After one particularly violent punch of air to the stomach, she had to lay down for a second to get her breath back, giving him time to get up from on top of her and start towards the box again.

She shot an arm out as he moved away, catching his ankle with a hard grip, feeling some sort of metal brace under the leather of his trousers. He toppled to the ground with a pained yelp, and she quickly crawled over to pin him to the concrete floor as the unconscious men nearby stirred.

“Go! Now!” She yelled at them as they spotted her pinning the supervillain down, and they hurriedly shoved the box into the van with little fanfare, driving off quickly.

She returned her attention to the man underneath her. It bothered her that he hadn’t tried using his telekinesis to make another go for the box, but as she looked down, she saw a pained grimace on his face, teeth gritted as if he was trying not to cry out. The ankle she had grabbed earlier was currently pressed down by one of her legs, but he was trying to shift it out from under there as gently as possible.

She moved the leg pinning it quickly to straddle him, and he let out a small sigh of relief as he straightened the ankle with the brace.

It was a few seconds before they both noticed how they were positioned; her hands holding his down, legs either side of his, and straddling his pelvis. Her eyes flickered to his, and a blush raced up her cheeks. He seemed equally flustered by their positioning for a moment, and she could feel his growing interest just below her hips.

“Can I let you go now without you going after that truck?” She whispered, eyes locked with his.

A smirk crossed his face. “ I don’t know, dearie. You can’t keep me pinned here forever, you know. And I am aware of where that truck is going. I will get to it at some point.”

“I just need to keep you busy until it gets there, then.” She replied, pressing his arms more harshly against the concrete.

“Well, much as I enjoy this… _comfortable_ and… _interesting_ … position we seem to be in, you must realise that I, unlike you, don’t have the time to waste.”

“Oh, believe me, I don’t enjoy having to do this any more than you do-” she was cut off by a sudden rush of telekinetic power, converging on all sides, lifting her off the Spinner and pinning her to the wall. He got up slowly and advanced on her, close enough to almost touch.

“Now I’m afraid I’m going to have to knock you out, dearie. Nothing personal; I just don’t want you following me, you understand.” He was alarmingly close now, face inches from hers.

She slowed down time to try to examine the force pinning her to the wall, and discovered her arms were free, despite not being able to move her torso. Maybe if she could grab his head while she had the element of surprise and knock him against the wall…

Her arm shot out, grabbing the back of his head and moving it around towards the wall. She wasn’t quite fast enough, however; his head jerked to the side as he registered what was going on, and suddenly his lips were mashed against hers.

Both parties froze with surprise, eyes wide open and staring at each other. His lips were warm, and soft, and sent electric tingles through her own, racing down her spine and starting a fire in her belly. After a moment, he closed his eyes, moving his lips against hers, and all her thoughts spiralled away.

Their lips and tongues slid together, tangled and entwined for what felt like hours. She writhed against him, his hands skimming up and down her sides or curling around her head to tilt her closer, hers clutched around his back.

At one point, her legs crept up his hips; he moved his hands down to shift her weight up, and her core brushed his erection, dragging a gasp from her lips.

He froze at the sudden outburst of sound; her eyes snapped open, and for a moment, instead of the golden-green scales and amber eyes she had expected to see, she was met with a black mask and deep, soulful brown eyes.

She blinked; suddenly the scales were back, the hands on her ass were wrenched away, and he stumbled back, leaving her to catch her balance as best she could. He looked at her with part horror, part fascination, but as she made a movement to stand up properly, rose straight up into the air and vanished from sight. She was left to slowly get up and make her way back to HQ, all the time in a daze, wondering what on earth had just occurred.


	6. The Fury

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fallout of the events of Chapter 5...

Her head was still spinning from the events of earlier as she mechanically returned her supersuit to HQ, changed, and headed home. Her walk was, thankfully, uneventful, and she didn’t bump into anyone at HQ on her way. She couldn’t focus; her mind was occupied with one, blindingly important and glaringly obvious question:

What on earth was _that?!_

She’d never really felt much of an attraction towards the supers she worked with before, both hero and villain alike; she liked to know that whomever she was dating wasn’t going to have an unusual history, wasn’t going to have to hide who they were. It made everything _simpler_.

There wasn’t any major stigma attached to dating other supers, even if you kept it between your disguised selves; if someone did figure out who you had feelings for, said person could easily defend themselves. Her friends Snow and Charming had been going out for a good 2 years now, and they seemed to be doing alright. However, Belle didn’t relish the fact that she’d probably have to reveal who she was to whomever she did end up dating; she felt oddly protective of her librarian self, and for good reason- those who knew who she was could go after her father. Her mother. The rest of her family. Even Robert.

She would have been okay if she found herself attracted to a fellow superhero, she supposed; they were somewhat more trustworthy, at times (although there was that incident when she went on one date with The Hunter which turned out terribly…), but a supervillain? One who had spent years battling her mother, when her mother was a superhero?

Hell no.

The apartment was dark and quiet as she let herself in, not quite sure how she had been on autopilot for the entire walk back from HQ. Robert obviously still wasn’t back yet; the flowers from the day before were still in the vase, and the leftover dishes from the lasagna she had made the night before still lay soaking in the sink.

She mechanically washed up the dishes, disposed of the wilting flowers, and tended to the grazes from the day’s fight before heading to bed, her mind still spinning with the events of the day, but leaving the door to her room open so she would hear when he came in.

She didn’t hear Robert come in; he must have arrived sometime in the dead of the night while she was sleeping, but when she woke up and wandered out in search of breakfast, his coat was back on its hook, fresh flowers were in the vase on the table, and a note sat folded next to them, his curly handwriting scrawled across the front;

_Belle,_

_I’m sorry I wasn’t able to go out to dinner with you last night; as you know, I had business with a client who was particularly troublesome, and this kept me out until the wee hours._

_I’ve called Marco’s, and booked us a table for tonight, if that’s okay? I apologised to him for us not being able to make it last night, and he was happy to reschedule it._

_Please accept these flowers as an apology for my being unable to be there yesterday. I had to go out quite early today for similar business, but I left you some pastries from the corner-shop in the cupboard for you to heat when you’re ready for breakfast._

_I look forward to seeing you at 7:30pm tonight._

_Gold_

She let out a sigh of appreciation, pressed a small kiss to the paper, and turned to the kitchen to make breakfast, all thoughts of the turbulent events of the evening before firmly banished from her mind for a few precious minutes.

 

***

 

Belle might not have come in the next morning if she had thought to look at the newspaper before she arrived at work. She strolled into the lobby of HQ with an air of ease after rearranging her date with Robert that morning for later that day; even the unease she felt whenever she thought of the Spinner couldn’t hide her joy.

Those feelings of lightness and giddy happiness abruptly left when Blue stormed across the lobby towards her, shoving the day’s newspaper in her face.

“Thorn!! What the fuck is this?!” Blue yelled, attracting the attention of the entire reception hall.

She took a moment to see the headline, and gasped; It read, _Robbery at Cricket Enterprises factory!_

“You didn’t try to take him on alone, did you? You stupid girl!!”

“I… I… it was late… I didn’t have the time to get backup…”

“There’s no excuses, Thorn!” She screeched in her face. “You don’t go up against that level of supervillain alone, understand? Your powers aren’t a match, you could have taken the five seconds required to call for backup, that’s why we have superheroes on call!! You hear me? We’re never going to catch him if you don’t swallow your pride and call for backup!! Understood?”

The entire lobby was so silent you could hear the drop of the papers Cinderella was holding as they fluttered to the ground. Blue was towering over Belle, a glower on her face that nearly could have melted through stone.

“Yes, Blue.” She muttered, almost shrinking back. Blue could be downright scary and vicious when she was worked up about something- she had seen her wrath directed at other supers around HQ before, but never felt the rolling anger directed at herself before.

It was a good thing that she hadn’t taken backup, she supposed as she slunk off to her research room quietly; if Blue had heard about what had really happened between her and the Spinner last night… she shuddered.

Though it was strange that she’d get quite so het up about the Spinner case- it was only minor robbery as of yet, unless Blue knew something about the man that she didn’t…

She spent the day looking up files on the Dark One. Belle was almost certain now that the Dark One and the Spinner were one and the same, just with different costumes, so it wouldn’t hurt to see a full account of what had happened back then.

The hours of research she conducted told her a few things. The Dark One was worse- much, much worse- than the Spinner, committing several instances of blackmail and drug deals, kidnappings and assassinations for a price. Among the criminal side of the super community, he had been known as the Dealmaker, capable of fulfilling any dirty work that needed doing if you were willing to pay enough.

She was curious; what would motivate someone to commit the worst atrocities, fake their death, and then start out again with a new identity to commit petty theft some ten years later?

She had kept half an eye on the newsfeeds from around the city all day, but found nothing of interest related to the Spinner case; all the technological companies in the city were on tight lockdown after the events of the night before- there would be no new thefts today.

Belle left the office promptly at five, carefully looking around the lobby before entering to make sure she didn’t run into Blue again. She had no idea how long Blue’s anger would last, but she didn’t want to find out just yet- she had a date to prepare for, after all.


	7. The Date

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Date night, attempt number two...

Her preparations for the date went surprisingly smoothly, given the butterflies flitting through her stomach. She ended up choosing a lacey blue dress with a red belt and a beautiful pair of heels, brushing her hair carefully to preserve the ringlets that formed after her shower, and putting her emergency mask into her purse (it was better safe than sorry, after all).

She heard the knock on her bedroom door at precisely a quarter past seven, and opened it to be presented with a bouquet of red roses and a smartly-dressed, smiling Robert. She gave a beaming grin in answer to his own.

“These are beautiful!” She said, accepting the flowers with a nod of appreciation. “Do you have a vase to put them in out already, by any chance?”

“Of course,” he replied, gesturing to the empty vase sitting on the kitchen table, previously full of red carnations when she had come in from work, now empty except for fresh water. She gave Robert a kiss on the cheek on the way past to put the flowers in the vase, and his cheeks were a charming shade of pink as she turned back to take his arm, and they strolled out of the apartment.

The walk took longer than usual, but they were in no hurry, despite being slowed down to allow Robert to walk comfortably with his cane. The questions between them were innocent and innocuous, about how their days at work had been (she learnt that the client who had made such a fuss hadn’t been seen again yet, but that he’d got what he needed from them; he was regaled with tales of a slow day in the library and a head librarian who was giving her a headache, all lies). They watched the sun set between the buildings, marvelled at how a city with so many supers could survive with most of its skyscrapers intact, and concluded jointly that the movies about superheroes and supervillains tended towards the dramatic rather than the accurate.

They arrived at the small italian restaurant precisely on time, and were greeted inside by Marco himself, who shook his landlord’s hand and inquired as to their health before seating them at a table for two in a cosy corner at the back of the restaurant.

They were settled with their menus quickly, and silence descended for a few moments, a comfortable silence as they decided what to eat.

“I think I’ll go for the Margarita pizza.” Robert said after a while. “How about you?”

She lowered her menu. “I’ll go for a spaghetti bolognese, I think.” She replied.

“I would go for the lasagna,” he said, “but yours is so much better.”

She chuckled. “How do you know? He could have the best lasagna in the world, and you’d have never tasted it if you just stuck to my homemade hodge-podge of a dish.”

He reached for one of her hands. “Yours will always be the best lasagna I’ve ever tasted, Belle.” He smiled, a gentle smile, love crinkling the corners of his eyes. They gazed at each other, loving, gentle looks that seemed to caress each other’s souls.

They were oblivious to the world around them until a waiter standing by their table cleared his throat quietly. They both jumped with surprise, almost in unison, and laughed about it for a minute before Robert placed their orders, handing the menus back before reaching across the table to take her hands in his again.

“So…” she asked. He quirked an eyebrow with a rakish smile as she hesitated. “So… I haven’t really had the time to visit your pawn shop recently. Have you acquired anything interesting lately?”

He leaned back, reclaiming one of his hands to rub at his clean-shaven chin thoughtfully. “Hmm… there’s an antique clock that came into my possession recently that needs a lot of repair. And I’m in the process of re-binding a first-edition copy of _Pride and Prejudice_ \- that’s an ongoing job, but I managed to find some new fabric that would be a perfect cover for it yesterday. That wasn’t why I wasn’t able to make out date yesterday, though.” His brow furrowed, deep in thought.

She caught the hand under his chin in her own again. “Hey… don’t worry about it, Robert.” She said soothingly. “It’s not your fault when business calls. I understand- I’ve had my fair share of emergency situations at the library that needed my attention at all hours of the night.”

“At the library?” He scoffed.

“Yes!” She replied indignantly. “Remember two weeks ago? I had to go in the middle of eating dinner because a pipe had burst in the library near the half-penny bridge. If there hadn’t been enough people there to move the books, half the collection would have been lost!”

He immediately sobered up. “My apologies, Belle.” He murmured. “I didn’t mean to belittle your work; I just don’t know the ins and outs of what you do all day, is all.” He looked at her hopefully.

She smiled. “I’ll just have to educate you on how to look after books properly then, won’t I?” She replied, her tone light and teasing.

He smiled, a crooked, teasing half smile. “I’ll happily submit to any lessons you want to bestow on me, my lady.” He replied, the brogue of his voice rough and sending butterflies swirling through her belly.

They smiled at each other for a few minutes more, until the food arrived. The bolognese was very tasty, and Robert seemed equally taken with his food, and they cleared their plates quickly.

She looked up from her empty plate as she put her fork and spoon down to see Robert watching her intently. She dabbed gently at her mouth with her napkin, his deep brown eyes never leaving hers, and she smiled at him as she put her napkin down and took his hand again.

“So… what were we talking about before we were interrupted by that lovely meal?”

“I believe you were offering me lessons in book care?” He asked, an amused smile on his face.

“I believe so…” She said. She immediately launched into a brief explanation of how to look after old and fragile books properly. He listened with rapt interest, and she felt a pang in her heart that it wasn’t really what she did all day. Given that he restored old books amongst other things, he was more qualified at it than she was.

She had gotten a degree in library science, it was true, but that was a part time thing- for all the time she spent at university pursuing her ‘degree’, she was really training with other young supers who wanted to learn to utilize their powers for good over evil. She had studied for her degree, but that had been precious moments stolen with her bending of time inbetween workouts with other supers to learn how to apply her abilities to the fullest.

It had paid off, in the end- she now had excellent control over the time around her, but she still sometimes wished she was a real librarian, a proper librarian, who spent her days caring for old tomes and recommending stories and reading to children and all the other things she pretended she spent her days on.

Their conversation about books continued well into dessert; they drifted from methods of caring for and restoring books onto their favourite books of various different genres; he quite liked science fiction and fantasy, an area of literature which she also enjoyed, but preferred the high fantasy end of the genre over what he sniffily referred to as ‘supernatural young-adult wish fulfillment books’.

They eventually exited the restaurant in the middle of an argument of how much they both hated Twilight, for a variety of more and more ridiculous reasons after they exhausted the obvious, and a discussion of which Harry Potter houses they would each be in commenced as they walked home.

“No… I’m definitely a Slytherin. Sorry, sweetheart.”

“You’re not, Robert.” Belle replied. “You’re a Ravenclaw at least. Always collecting things, always looking for new knowledge.”

“You don’t know me that well yet, Belle.” He answered. “I’m sure you’ll change your mind someday.”

“I won’t.”

He gave her a glare, muttered something about the stubbornness of Gryffindors, and they kept walking.

They arrived inside their apartment with little fanfare, and he dropped her off at her bedroom door. They stood there for a moment, and she wondered if they would do anything more tonight.

He was unnaturally quiet as he considered her.

“So… did you enjoy tonight?” He asked, almost uncharacteristically timid.

“I loved it.” Belle replied, beaming at him, and being rewarded with a small smile in return. She made to hug him, and after a moment of hesitation his arms came up around her back to hold her close, her head tucked into his shoulder, his nose buried in her hair. She rubbed his back soothingly as they parted, kissing his cheek as her face passed it, but kept a hand cupped around his jaw to stop him moving away immediately.

“It’s true, Robert. I loved spending time with you, and I’d be happy to do it again sometime.”

He looked like he’d been hit by a sledgehammer, but smiled back at her. “I’m glad.” He replied meekly. “Would you like to go out again next Thursday? Assuming I don’t get any tenant issues again?” Robert’s voice was quiet, his question holding a hopeful note.

“Yes.” She said, nodding. She smiled back at him, and they were both smiling, and soon they were standing in the hallway, nose to nose, laughing quietly together. Eventually they quietened. “Would you like to pick where we go next?” She asked.

“Sure.” He replied. “There’s a movie out next week which I think you might like- one of those new marvel ones. Would you like to go see it with me?”

She nodded. They exchanged quiet goodnights, and on impulse she pressed her lips to his softly before turning to slip inside her own room.


	8. The Mask-Maker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A visit to a friend...

Granny’s was a diner, to all intents and purposes, during the day. It was quite a different environment most times Belle went to visit it, but that was mostly because her visits tended to be in the dead of the night, when the diner was closed and the mask-shop underneath was opened.

It was a good 3 days after her date with Robert, and she was frustrated that her weekend trips into the office hadn’t been fruitful in giving her any new information on the Spinner’s movements. To top it all off, her mind kept mulling over that kiss.

She fancied Robert. She really did. For a good month or two, he had been the subject of her fantasies late at night in her bed. She had imagined him kissing her while he was making breakfast, or pulling her onto one of the kitchen counters for an intense make-out session, or holding her close while they snuggled up on the couch, pressing a kiss to her forehead. She had imagined pressing him up against the wall in the hallway when he got home, or him doing the same to her, his cane clattering to the ground so he could pull her closer…

Except the last of those had evolved to being pressed up against the wall by a golden-skinned curly-haired man in tight, _tight_ leather pants. Which wasn’t exactly what she had in mind for fantasising about that evening, hence her late-night trip to Granny’s.

Thankfully Robert was reasonably used to her going out late at night. He would protest every time that it wasn’t safe to go jogging at such late hours of the evening, but she would show him her phone in her pocket and the can of mace in the other, and he would let her pass with nary a word of fuss.

She slid the plain mask onto her face in an alleyway before entering the basement of Granny’s, but there wasn’t much point; Granny had already seen her face, anyway.

The mask-makers of the city were reknowned for being the only people to know the true identities of the supers they created masks for, or to at least know how to spot them in a crowded line-up. If you wanted a mask better than the plain black one-size-fits-all masks found in every civic building, if you wanted to create a name for yourself, if you wanted to be something other than some random kid zooming around the city or throwing fireballs or whatever it was that you did, you could go to a mask-maker. They would help craft you an identity, something distinct. They would look at you and your face and tell you how best to disguise your face so that no-one who ever knew you could see who was behind the mask. They would craft each mask to fit the face it was made for so that it would not fall off in battle, and give you a way to be identified as a super by friend and foe alike.

The mask makers had to be careful, of course. Their popularity, their reputation lay in their discretion; she had heard tales of a mask maker, a few years back, who had accidentally told a friend the true name of a villain known as The Queen of Hearts (whom she had helped apprehend a few weeks earlier). Said friend wound up dead on his front doorstep a day later; his wife disappeared, and he had to put his daughter into a witness protection program, never to be seen again.

She had never heard of exactly where he was now or what happened to him, but suffice to say his reputation as a maker of masks was ruined.

The basement of Granny’s was a riot of colour; fabrics strewn everywhere, manequins and dresses and rails and dress bags, needles and threads and masks, all in various states of completion, covered the room. She crossed the room to find a red-haired young woman reading a magazine in the corner; Ruby, the granddaughter of the famous Granny Lucas, was being groomed by her grandmother to eventually inherit the business. Ruby was a friend of hers away from the mask maker’s business as well as within its walls.

“Hey, Thorn!” Ruby said as she noticed Belle walking in. Ruby was one of the few to know Belle’s real name, but seldom used it where there was a chance they could be overheard by supers. “How are you? How did the date go? I want to know everything!” She motioned for Belle to sit down on one of the seats across the table from her, standing to go over to the small kitchenette in the corner. “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Hot chocolate? That tea you seem so awfully fond of?”

“I’ll have tea, thankyou.” Belle replied. She had been a tea addict for the last 3 months since her roommate couldn’t stop drinking the stuff. One of Robert’s few bad habits was to leave half-finished, cold cups of tea on every surface imaginable, though that had decreased in recent months. She had no idea why, but still now drunk at least 3 cups a day of the Yorkshire Tea he stocked the cupboards with. Ruby dutifully put the kettle on, and soon she had a steaming mug of Earl Grey sat in front of her on the table. Ruby slid back into the opposite seat with her coffee.

“Soooo… How did it go, darling?”

Belle smiled at Ruby’s eager inquisitiveness. “We had a lovely time, thankyou. We went to Marcos, ate some very nice food, had a lovely conversation, and then went back home.”

“Well that’s all well and good, but what else happened?” Ruby asked. “Did he kiss you? Did you jump him like you’ve wanted to for months? Give me the details, woman!” Ruby growled from across the table, eliciting a giggle from Belle.

“Ruby! He’s too much of a gentleman! We were never going to go the entire way on one date, darling!”

Ruby sighed, her head dropping back as she let out an exasperated sound, and thumped the table. “Oh, why don’t I attract the gentlemen, rather than the ones that try to grope your ass two seconds after meeting you?” She looked at Belle again, expectantly. “You did kiss him though, right?”

Belle smiled, and Ruby leaned forward in excitement.

“You kissed him?! I knew it! I need all the details, stat!”

Belle shook her head. “It was only a peck, Ruby. He’s not exactly the make-out session type, you know. We’re taking it slowly- I think he’s a bit nervous, to be honest. I don’t want to scare him off.”

“Aww, that’s so sweet!” Ruby said, stretching a hand across the table to grasp one of Belle’s own. “I’m happy for you, darling. I really am.” Her smile prompted one of Belle’s own, and they sat drinking together in peaceful companionship for several minutes.

After a while, the soft creak of one of the doors alerted them to the entrance of Granny Lucas, who, upon seeing Belle, bustled over to the table where she and Ruby were sitting at.

“Ah, hello, sweetheart. What can we do for you this evening? Oh, and how did the date go? Ruby’s been yammering on about it for days now!” The elderly lady gave Belle a smile, directed a frown at Ruby, and went to ruttle through a sewing box for a tape measure.

“The date went splendidly, thanks, Granny.”

“I’m so glad.” Granny replied with a smile. “He’s such a nice young man, from what I heard from you.”

“Nice?! Young?!” Ruby exclaimed with a scoff of surprise.

Granny swatted the back of her head. “Now now, Ruby. You might not like that Robert boy that much, but he’s been ever so sweet to Thorn here. And yes, he’s a good twenty years younger than I am- I am quite entitled to call him young, young lady!” After she finished admonishing Ruby, she turned to Belle with a smile. “What can we do for you this evening, dear? Would you like us to work on your dress and mask for the next masque ball perhaps? Ruby and I have had some good ideas in that direction, and our next step is consulting you on which design you would prefer for this month.”

And soon her thoughts on her relationship with Robert and the strange situation with the Spinner were pushed firmly out of her mind as she got deep into discussion with the two about colours and trims and all manner of embroideries.


	9. The Masque

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The masque ball! Dancing, secrets and a long awaited conversation...

The masque ball.

The city held these once a month; a spectacle of colours and costumes and a surprising amount of peace. It was the only occasion supers could meet up in a safe location with enemies and friends alive with no fear of amnosity; a meeting place for alliances to be made and broken, friendships to be forged or lost forever. The city financed these events, lending use of the city hall for the purpose. A ceasefire was in force at each and every one, and with so many supers in one place, no one would dare to break it. The city’s main reason for funding it was to ‘encourage good relations’, but everyone who went knew the real reason; monitoring the factions rising and falling within the super community to better plan how to defend the civilian population.

The decor changed with every ball to reflect the spirit of the season; being early spring, the hall today was decked in blossoms of pink and white, vines of new leaves woven around the pillars and banisters, the sweet smell of apple blossom and honeysuckle winding through the air.

Granny had outdone herself with Belle’s dress for tonight; a warm yellow embellished with tiny fabric roses along the bodice, a full skirt with room to move for dancing, elbow-length gloves and another lovingly crafted mask with thorny vines trailing across the surface.

She walked carefully into the hall; the skirts didn’t catch on her heels as she walked, thanks to the petticoats keeping it away from her body. Granny had also reminded her when she collected the dress that, as always, the skirts could be removed easily in an emergency. Trust a person who made superhero costumes to plan for all occasions- she had even included a holster for a knife fitted to the pants to wear underneath.

Several people were already milling around the ballroom; she spotted a fair few plain black masks, the mark of new supers or civilian guests, but most of the people dancing or talking wore their own custom made masks, embellished with symbols identifying who they were. She spotted Snow (mask, as always, embroidered with snowflakes no matter the time of year) dancing with Charming (a small golden crown on the centre of his forehead, but the eye mask a plain leather otherwise). She also spotted the Hunter, talking to a girl near the bar set up at a corner of the room, and quickly moved off in the opposite direction. She didn’t fancy an encounter with her one-time date this evening, especially since he kept suggesting they try going out again every time they met.

She turned to avoid a particularly wildly-veering set of dancers and stumbled into someone, who grabbed her elbows to stop her tripping over. She turned to look at who she had collided with, eyes meeting gold scales and a mask embellished with spinning wheels embroidered across in a repeating motif.

“Well well well… If it isn’t the little rosebud.” He said, voice high but of reasonable volume; a show for the people around them to hear.

“I was wondering if I’d see you around here.” She replied, glancing up and down at his elaborate costume. He was dressed like a gentleman from the 18th century, as if out of a regency novel, with a dark golden coat, a heavily embroidered waistcoat in the same colour, and tall boots over his usual leather pants. It screamed flamboyance and flair, a style which indicated he certainly didn’t get his costumes from Granny’s.

He gave a bow. “Whyever wouldn’t I be here? I think you and I have a lot to talk about,” he glanced around before leaning in, “And away from your employer’s ears. Care for a dance?” He offered a hand expectantly.

She hesitated, then took his hand, and he led her onto the dancefloor just as a waltz was starting up.

“So… care to explain what happened on Thursday? Because I don’t have a clue.” She asked as they started swirling across the floor.

He looked at her incredulously. “I’m as clueless as you, dearie. I think it’s fair to say that neither of us, erm… _intended_ for the fight to have that outcome. For the record, I do have a girlfriend, and don’t want to be unfaithful to her.” He paused for a second, a frown crossing his face. “I believe my reaction was mostly down to the frustration of having to cancel my date with her that evening for the robbery.”

“For the record, I am also not single in my normal life. I believe we are of the same opinion- that the events of Thursday shall never be spoken of again. Correct?”

“Quite correct.” He replied. They didn’t speak for a minute or so, the silence slightly awkward but their dancing remaining flawless. She wasn’t trying but all her focus was on his hands on her- one holding hers, leading them this way and that, navigating the busy floor, the other lightly placed on her waist, sending sparks of fire through her abdomen every so often, warm and present.

“Out of curiosity…” she ventured after a while.

“Yes?” He asked.

“… what _did_ you need the synthetic materials from the factory for? Was it for anything specific?”

“To manufacture the eventual downfall and gruesome end of the Blue Fairy.” He deadpanned, and she nearly tripped over his foot, stumbling slightly in shock, but he caught her before she could fall.

“Just a quip, rosebud.” He twittered, giggling at the surprise on her face. He took a moment to spin her before continuing, “I am, in fact, a collector of sorts. I don’t know exactly what I need, and it’s going to take a while to find out or think up something that marries with my eventual goals.”

“Which are…?”

“My my my, you are a curious little hero, aren’t you?” He muttered. “Getting revenge, mainly.”

“Against Blue?”

“You know who I am, dearie; who else?” He spun them to a stop at the edge of the dancefloor as the final dying notes rung out from the band playing on the stage.

“Why Blue, though?” Belle asked, not letting go of his hand as he made to release her and disappear into the crowd.

“Those reasons are best kept between the Spinner and myself, I think.” Belle turned around at the icy voice from behind her; her boss had materialised out of the crowd, dressed in a deep royal blue with a garish amount of embroidery and sequins, a butterfly mask covering her face.

“Ah, the other person I _really_ wanted to see tonight.” The Spinner growled, sarcasm dripping from his voice, hand gripping tighter to Belle’s almost reflexively. “Tell me, tried to viciously murder any other supers recently?”

“Well obviously it wasn’t that vicious a murder given that you’re standing here today!” Blue hissed. Belle made to slip away through the crowd, but his grip tightened. “We still have more to discuss, rosebud.”

He turned back to Blue. “Why are you sending your petty followers after me, Blue? What happened ten years ago died with the Dark One.”

“Ah, but it wasn’t the Dark One who died, was it?” Blue’s voice was full of frustrated anger. “Next time I try to kill you, try coming along in person, rather than sending a lackey!”

“OH, you’re such a high and mighty hero, aren’t you? Murdering without stopping to consider the lives of the people you’re attacking? Did you tell your petty guild of heroes who you murdered, huh? HUH?”

The security guards started across the room as their voices rose.

“I didn’t murder anyone, you imbecile! Heroes don’t kill! They don’t lie, or steal, or disguise who they really are! They don’t hide!”

“Yes, you do!” He almost shouted in her face. “You twist the truth to your own purposes! You hide behind elaborate masks and clinical detachment so that you don’t have to feel the blood on your hands! You steal wives from husbands, mothers from daughters, fathers from sons!”

“We don’t make plots to rip families apart! We don’t try and destroy cities, we try to stop people disappearing and crimes occurring and children vanishing into the night!”

“THEN WHAT DID YOU DO WITH MY SON? HUH? WHERE IS HE NOW, BLUE? WHERE IS MY SON?!” He screamed in her face. The band came to a discordant halt, the room silenced. Blue went a ghostly white behind her mask.

“I had nothing to do with that tragedy, Dark One. You know that. The boy came to me willingly. It’s not my fault that you didn’t listen to him.” Blue’s words were quiet, soft, almost whispered, but the Spinner staggered back, the fight draining out of him, as Blue turned and left, the crowd parting seamlessly to let her pass out of the ballroom.

The band started up again, hesitantly, and the dancers started spinning around the floor again. Conversations slowly started resuming, and after a few minutes, the room was as it was before.

The Spinner still stood stock still, silent and as quiet as a mouse.

She eventually took pity on him, quietly leading him through the crowd and out to the gardens, seating him on a bench. He seemed meek, quiet, a shadow of his earlier self.

“Are you okay?” She softly asked. “Can I get you a drink, or anything?”

He mutely shook his head, not letting her hand go, and she remained sitting quietly beside him on the bench. After another few minutes, he eventually started speaking, voice soft, like a whisper on the wind, a broken note in his voice, barely trying to put on the voice of the Spinner, but the low volume masking his true accent.

“I… I haven’t seen Blue in so long. I didn’t realise she’d be able to get under my skin like that quite so easily. Not again.”

“She’s… not the easiest person to stand up to, I’ll give you that.” She replied quietly, eliciting a small, weak laugh from him. She turned to examine his face, covered with scales but unusually pale still. “You… you mentioned a son? What happened to him? What happened between you and Blue?”

“I did have a son, once,” He replied, but then turned to her. “But the exact tale is best saved for another time. Maybe if I knew you wouldn’t take it back to Blue, I might offer the story.” His voice held a sorrowful note in it, and she felt a pang go through her heart at the sound.

“Maybe.” She replied. They were silent for another few minutes, before she asked, “I wonder… If we were on the same side, do you think we would be friends?”

He chuckled. “Maybe.” He replied. “You’ve got your mother’s penchant for wit, and you’re far more willing to listen than most of Blue’s lackeys. She was one of the few superheroes I could stand back in the day. And now it seems you’re one of the few I can stand in the community as it is.”

“There’s not a lot of the other supers at HQ who like talking while fighting, to be honest.” She replied. “They think it’s all about punching this and kicking that- they don’t appreciate what you can learn from how a person talks, how they respond. It’s funner to talk than to fight in silence, anyway, don’t you think?”

“Quite right, rosebud.” He nodded. “I learn a lot from how your fellow supers respond to what I say. And I enjoy our banter, though you don’t seem to give off a lot of clues.”

“Practice.” She airily replied, eliciting a chuckle from him. She looked over at him again; the colour had returned to his golden-green cheeks. “Feel ready to face the music again?” She asked.

“I don’t see why you’re so concerned, but I should be. There are other people I need to talk to this evening, both friend and foe alike.”

“Well, my main business this evening was with you, so I think I might call it a night, if you’re not going to stick around and chat.”

He smiled. “No offense, but a lot of the people I need to talk to probably won’t talk to me if you’re stuck to my side like a limpet.”

“Can I get a dramatic blow-by-blow summary of all your negotiations and the reasons behind them afterwards?”

A full blown laugh came from his chest, quite unlike the giggles he had emmitted earlier; this was deep and warm and… _familiar_? It felt like being wrapped in a blanket of joy.

“Sadly, no, rosebud.” He said after he brought his laughter under control. He stood slowly, offering her a hand up. “Maybe someday if we’re fighting on the same side…”

“I understand.” She replied, smiling back at him, a sad smile. The more she thought about it, the more she concluded that yes; in another place, another time, they would have been wonderful friends. He was someone who could keep up with her, who could challenge her and give no quarter.

He returned her small, sad smile, before turning and making his way back into the ballroom, leaving her to stand and watch the city lights and the stars, and wonder if she’d chosen the right job, the right _side_ , after all. 


	10. The Quiet Company

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A quiet night in and a sad story...

It was a few days later when it was time for their second date, but Belle had had an awful day. Instead of spending time researching the Spinner’s movements, like she had been intending to, she had been put on minor criminal duty for the day, helping the police to catch non-supers performing criminal acts. She had participated in 3 drugs busts, rescued two women from their violent partners (the second one was responsible for the rather purple bruise spreading across her ribs right now) and helped train police officers in hand-to-hand combat, a skill she had spent rather too much time practicing as of late, both at her supernatural speeds and at the normal pace that other people learned it at.

There were advantages to being able to put in more hours of practice in a day than were humanely possible.

However, she was now regretting it as she staggered into the apartment. She really didn’t feel like she was up to going out to the movies tonight; her whole body screamed at her to stay in, sit on the couch, and order in something with plenty of sugars and carbohydrates, a side effect to effectively adding another six hours onto her day.

Robert was already home; she could hear him walking around in the kitchen. Peeking inside, she saw him working to prepare another vase of flowers for the table, a bouquet of deep red roses, the fragrant smell wafting through the penthouse apartment already. She made to leave unnoticed, but a floorboard creaked and his head snapped around, expression surprised but softening as he noticed who lurked in the doorway.

“Hey, you’re home early.” He greeted her softly, before turning back to keep cutting the stems, placing them in the vase full of water beside him.

She smiled, and wandered across the kitchen to watch him better. He had discarded his suit jacket over a nearby chair, shirt sleeves rolled up, and she admired the flex of the muscles in his arm for a moment before replying to his questioning look.

“Yeah… Martha, my boss, let me go early so I could get ready for our date tonight.” She sighed.

He noticed the tired tone in her voice, even though she tried her best to not let it get through. “You don’t sound that enthusiastic, sweetheart. Is something wrong?”

She buried her face in her hands. “No… well, yes. Well… I don’t know.”

He looked at her with concern, putting the scissors down so he could come over to lift her hands away from her face. “Are you okay, love?” He asked softly, deep brown eyes searching hers.

“I’m fine. Really.” She said, her most reassuring tones in her voice being used. “I just had a bit of a difficult day at the library, that’s all…”

He pulled her close in a soft hug, and she leaned in, careful to keep the bruised area of her ribs away from his chest.

“We don’t have to go out this evening if you don’t want to, love.” He muttered into her hair. “If you’ve had a bad day then traipsing across town probably isn’t the answer to your problems.”

“You’re right.” She sighed, resting her head on his shoulder for a moment before drawing back. “You really don’t mind if we stay in tonight instead?”

He smiled, shaking his head. “I don’t mind at all, sweetheart. Would you like me to order some takeaway?”

She gave a broad grin. “I’d love that. I could find us something to watch on the telly, or try at getting it to work with Netflix again…”

He nodded, and they parted, going about their separate tasks. Eventually, they both ended up lounging next to each other on the biggest of the sofas in the living room, pizza boxes spread across the table in front of them, an old episode of Star Trek playing on the TV in the background. His waistcoat was abandoned on another chair in the kitchen, her heels were somewhere deep under the sofa, and she was leaning back into his arms, head pillowed on his shoulder as they half-watched the telly.

“I used to really enjoy watching Star Trek with my mum, you know.” Belle said. “We would lounge around on the sofa in the evening while dad was down the pub and watch episodes of DS9 and Voyager.”

He chuckled, the rumbling vibration near her head pleasant. “I really enjoyed DS9, myself, when it was first showing. It’s a lot darker than the other Star Trek series but I think it takes the time to explore the characters more, don’t you think? I couldn’t watch it with my son, though- we watched TNG together when we had the time occasionally, but he much preferred other shows- sci-fi was never his cup of tea.”

“Hang on,” Belle said, lifting herself off his shoulder to twist in his arms and look at him, “You never told me you had a son.”

He looked slightly uncomfortable, but sighed and nodded at her continued curious expression.. “Yes. I had a son.”

She had been about to launch into a flurry of questions about him, but stilled at his sober use of the past tense and mournful expression. Instead, she was silent for a few moments, before asking, “Would… would you like to talk about him?”

He considered her for a moment, thinking, before nodding and pulling her back into her previous position in his arms again, his head moving down to kiss her hair once she was comfortably settled once again. It was a few moments before he started speaking.

“My son… my son was the light of my life for so long. I met his mother when I was growing up in Scotland, and we married immediately after we found out she was pregnant. We never got on well, though, and divorced shortly after our son’s tenth birthday. I decided that my son and I would do well to get out of Scotland- my hometown was a small village in the highlands, no place for a growing boy to get the opportunities he needed to succeed in life.

“So, we moved to America. I was working as a lawyer at the time, and I managed to get residential visas for both of us so we wouldn’t need to look back. And my son… my son loved it here. He loved his school, made friends with a girl… I think she was called Emma? She’s working as a small town sheriff now- and we were happy for I think the first time in my life.

“It couldn’t last. I got more wrapped up in my work than I should have, and when he was fifteen my boy went a bit… off the rails. I should have spent more time with him, I should have talked to him more… and then… and then he died.” He choked up on the last four words, voice breaking with a barely held back sob.

She twisted around to look at him again. Tears brimmed at the corner of his eyes, and she quickly moved up the sofa, sliding next to him so she could pull him close. They stayed like that for a few minutes, and she occasionally dropped kisses on his head as he cried, muttering soothing words.

“Hey… it’s not your fault, you know that, right?” She lifted his face to hers after a while, trying to reassure him with a sympathetic expression. He nodded, gave a shuddering sigh, and held her close again, tucking her head under his chin.

“I just wish I had had more time with him, I suppose. He was the sweetest, kindest boy you’d have ever met. He was the first to see good in people, he inspired me to be a better man. I quit being a lawyer after he died, started repairing antiques instead- I couldn’t go back to that life after it was what ripped me away from him. I’m a lot happier with what I do now than I ever was with being a lawyer- you see so much suffering there, it’s just not worth it.” He sighed again. “I think my boy has a habit of saving me, even from beyond the grave.”

“I wish I could have met him, he sounds wonderful.” She said, eliciting a chuckle from him.

“I’m sure the two of you would have gotten on very well- he wasn’t so fond of sci-fi, but you and he could probably have a long long conversation on the merits of Terry Pratchett.”

She giggled, and they silently went back to watching Star Trek, his hands running up and down her back in a comforting manner, though whether to comfort her or him she wasn’t sure.

After a while, the episode ended. She felt rather than heard his yawn travel through his chest, and gave an answering yawn of her own. It had been a long day.

He sat up, prompting her to sit up too, and turned to her with an apologetic smile.

“Thank you for listening tonight, Belle.” He said, voice quiet, cupping her cheek with tenderness, giving a small smile to answer her own. “I admit I wasn’t expecting to bring that up on our second date, but I guess we’re never going to do things normally.”

She put her hands on his shoulders, smoothing his shaggy hair as she did so in a comforting gesture. “Well, we’ve been living together for six months already; of course we weren’t going to do things normally. But you know what? I wouldn’t change how we’re doing this for the world.”

His smile at this was blinding, and he hugged her close.

“Thank you for telling me about your son.” She said, voice muffled by his hair, the musky scent of his shampoo invading her nose, causing her to bury her head closer to smell it better. It was her favourite, she realised absently, and wondered when she’d decided on a favourite scent of shampoo.

“Well, it’s not the only story you don’t know. There will be others- I’ve done some things I regret, in my time, you know.” He muttered into her hair.

She pulled back to look into his eyes. “Robert, no matter what you’ve done I’m not going to go, you know. I have my own secrets which I’ll tell you someday, but we’ll cross those bridges when we come to them- together.”

He nodded, a smile creeping across his face, before kissing her tenderly and bidding her goodnight.


	11. The Broken Code

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which an unlikely secret is revealed and a new enemy made...

When she arrived at HQ the next morning, her research room door was closed, with a note on it. She pulled it off the door to read the spidery handwriting;

_Thorn,_

_After the events of last week’s masque ball, I believe your work on the Spinner case requires more assistance. Please head to conference room 4 as soon as you get this._

_Blue_

She quickly turned around, heading up the stairs at top speed towards the conference room. Blue and Snow were waiting in the room as the door rattled open.

“You wanted to see me?” Belle said as she slowed to a stop. It took the other occupants of the room a moment to focus on her arrival, but Blue then blinked and stood up.

“Ah, Thorn. Good to have you with us.” She gestured to a chair opposite Snow, and returned to her seat as Belle sat down, handing her a sheaf of notes.

“Now, as I was explaining to Snow (and Charming before he had to head out), I’m changing who’s on the team to track down and catch the Spinner. You’ve been doing an admirable job at predicting his next moves, but what we really need is someone on the team who knows how to face him in combat. Given my prior experience battling the Dark One, I have determined that the best solution would be for me to take Charming’s place on the team.”

“Y- You?” Belle asked. “I thought you were sticking to desk work.”

“Well, it’s an important case, Thorn.” Blue replied, shuffling her notes. “I’ve read your reports, and agree with your conclusion that this probably is the Dark One. I’ve fought him before, and I have no idea how he didn’t die the last time I fought him. We are facing a very dangerous enemy, and it is imperative that we don’t let him get away again.

“The last two times you have fought him, he has escaped through flight. Given I can fly also, at his sort of speeds, this should eliminate that avenue of escape for him, and if he tries to escape on the ground, you, Thorn, should be able to stop him.”

“Is there anything I can help with?” Snow asked. “My powers aren’t really matched for his levels of ability.”

“We have found that your lightning abilities can be used to break his concentration, Snow.” Belle replied. “With someone who can create illusions, we will probably need to break it at some point purely so we can pinpoint his physical location.”

Blue looked thoughtful. “I think we need a way to ensure that he is rendered unconscious if we’re to get anywhere with his capture. Snow, is it possible you could up the dosage of lightning? Would that work?”

“Possibly…” She replied. “It might also give him a cardiac arrest, however. And we need him alive- if he’s got anyone else working with him, we’re screwed.”

“How about a sleeping gas? Or a dose of anesthetic?” Belle asked. “I could feasibly get close enough to inject him at high speed- he wouldn’t even know that it had happened until it was too late.”

“That’s an excellent idea, Thorn.” Snow said. “You might need to get some training as to how to administer it properly first, though. We don’t want to overdose him- ideally he should be out for a few minutes, giving us time to stop any traps he’s laid and find a way to block his powers.”

“This sounds like a good plan. I’ll get the paperwork filed to get you some anesthetic, Thorn, as long as you can learn all the medical knowledge required to use it safely first, though that shouldn’t be a problem. Snow, could you acquire a couple of power-blocking bracelets from the armory? And then it’s just a matter of waiting until we get news that he strikes again- Thorn, you _will_ let us know this time, yes?”

She rolled her eyes. “As long as you’ve got your mobiles on, yes.”

Blue smiled. “Excellent. I declare our meeting concluded, then.” Blue stood up, notes in hand, and exited the room quickly.

“What was all that about?” Snow asked. “She’s never gone after anyone personally before. Not the Queen of Hearts, not the Apprentice, not Captain Hook, no-one!”

“I’m not sure, but I think it might be something to do with what they talked about at the masque ball. Did you know he had a son?”

Snow looked confused. “Er, earth to Thorn? Any super worth their salt keeps their families well away from their masked identity, no matter whether they’re a hero or a villain?”

“Then why did Blue not react surprised when The Spinner mentioned him?” She asked. Snow looked even more confused and non-plussed, and Belle left the room. She had research to do.

 

***

 

It was a late afternoon at the desk when she got the call.

“Thorn? You’ve got to assemble a team. We’ve news that Cricket Enterprises are transporting another shipment of an even newer material to a factory out of town. The Spinner’s probably going to go after that one too.”

“Understood. Thanks, Cinderella.” She hung up on the receptionist, quickly typing texts to Blue and Snow to meet her at the depot before zooming out the building at top speed again.

It was a matter of minutes before Blue and Snow turned up in the parking lot, this time full of vans, and Blue looked somewhat happier than she had been the last time Belle saw her.

“Have you got the required materials, ladies?” She asked in a hushed voice.

Belle was about to pat her pocket to indicate so, but spotted a shimmer in the air behind her levitating companion. She instead opted to slow down time to get a better look, walking around her to spot-

_Yes_. There was that shimmer in the air from the last time she’d seen the Spinner using invisibility, a heat shimmer as if from a mirage. She jumped up, swiping her hand through the air. It took a few attempts, but eventually, her fingers brushed the sole of a boot. Another few attempts got her a hand around an ankle, and only then did she let time go again.

With a yelp of surprise, the Spinner shimmered into view (a rather limited view from her perspective of clinging to one of his ankles for dear life, but he had the leather pants on _again_ ) and quickly started falling to the ground, landing on top of Belle with an undignified sprawl, the air exiting her lungs with an unladylike oof!

Blue and Snow quickly swivelled around at the noise, gaping at the Spinner now kneeling on top of Belle, and he sent Snow flying into a wall with a wave of his hand and a snarl. Her head hit the wall with a crunch, and she slid down to lie against the corner. It was safe to say that Snow wouldn’t be participating in the rest of the fight.

She looked up again at the man kneeling on top of her. All his attention was focused on Blue.

“I see you’ve finally decided to leave your dreary little office, Blue. What prompted that decision? Was it me?” His voice was cruel, high and mocking.

“Well, I decided this time that you should be taken down _before_ you start another reign of violence and terror.” Belle was slowly inching her hand towards the pocket of her thigh where the anasthetic syringe was concealed, praying that Blue could keep his attention for long enough. If he looked down, especially back…

“Oh, you’re always jumping to conclusions, Blue. Never stopping to think!” Thankfully his attention was still entirely on the Blue Fairy, hovering a few feet away, but he didn’t get up to attack just yet. Her hand gently closed around the syringe, trying to not make a sound as she did so. “I don’t want to control the city, I never did. All I wanted was to stop tyrants like you getting into power!”

“ME?” She scoffed. “If you haven’t noticed, I’m not the one resorting to lying and stealing to further their own goals.”

“Of course not. You just rely on the citizens _giving_ you what you need out of the goodness of their hearts!”

The syringe was now free of her pocket, safely in her hand, and she slowed time down. She rolled up the leg of his pants with some difficulty, maneuvering the syringe to a patch of bare skin and sticking it in. The anasthetic administered, she replaced the leg of his pants over the brace before returning to her previous position, syringe now in a pocket again, and let time flow once more.

His hand absent-mindedly swatted at the back of his leg as if feeling a sudden mosquito bite. He stood up, and started throwing blasts of telekinetic power at the Blue fairy.

She didn’t make any immediate moves to attack him; his attention was still focused on Blue. Instead, she went over to Snow, checking her pulse, and feeling over her head for fractures. She was out cold, but her pulse beat a steady thrum under Belle’s fingers, and there were no obvious fractures or bleeding from her skull. The other supers would be able to fix her up, right as rain, but for now, she was safer lying down and out the way.

Belle checked her watch. It would be another few minutes before the employees moving the materials arrived, so they had time for the anasthetic she had injected to take effect. For now, they just had to keep an eye on him and stop The Spinner from running away.

She threw herself into the foray. He was using most of his telekinetic energy to keep Blue at a distance, a wall of force throwing her against the walls, but was still able to concentrate very well on Belle throwing punches, and he dodged accordingly. He’d probably been practicing for this very eventuality.

“Had a good week?” She asked him as she dodged a punch.

“It could have been worse. I had a lovely couple of dates with my girlfriend, but had a raging argument with Blue and a major setback in my plans to murder her in cold blood, as happens.”

“Well, you can’t murder people in cold blood left, right and centre, you know.” Belle replied, throwing a kick which he redirected with a burst of energy she wasn’t expecting. “What changed your mind?”

“Oh, a certain annoying little thorn in my side who would have been an excellent friend if she wasn’t on the payroll of my worst enemy.”

She gave a strangled laugh, but before she could reply he staggered. The forces battering Blue back suddenly ceased, and she flew to hover at Belle’s shoulder as he stumbled back, collapsing against a wall.

“What… What have you done?” He asked weakly. His scales were shimmering, going from gold to soft pink to gold again, his hair seeming to straighten and curl in waves. He collapsed one final time, and the illusion fell completely.

She started forward, almost in a trance. The face was a familiar shape, shoulder length brown hair falling about his face, a simple black suit and plain black mask hiding his features, an unwieldy metal contraption covered by the leg of his pants around one ankle.

Blue landed next to her, quietly reaching a hand out and fastening a leather bracelet around one of his limp wrists.

The power-blocking bracelets were a fairly recent innovation; designed for supervillains in prison, they were created with strands of hair from supers with the ability to block powers woven in, providing a shielding effect only on the person with the bracelet around their wrist. The leather design was more for comfort than for purpose; the designer initially made them for people with abilities beyond their control, so that they could blend in and live normal lives without throwing fireballs around the moment they got upset.

A shudder went through the man’s body. She watched as his chest rose and fell gently, and smiled to herself. The couple of hours reading up on how much anasthetic to administer had been well spent.

She was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she almost didn’t notice when Blue reached a hand up, pulling the Spinner’s mask clean off his face.

She looked up. Blue had thrown his mask a few feet away, and was reaching into a pocket.

“Wait- What are you…” Belle’s voice trailed off as she saw the Spinner’s- Robert’s- face revealed.

She gasped, and slowed time to a snail’s pace almost on instinct.

Robert- Robert- was the Spinner?

It suddenly all clicked into place in her head.

The cut on the head a few weeks ago.

The cancelled date- so he could get the material from Cricket Enterprises.

The brace around the ankle- he walked with a cane normally, there must be an injury there he worked hard to conceal from his super identity.

The glimpse of deep, brown eyes after the kiss- he must have been affected as she was, to forget to use the illusion for just a few seconds.

The mention of a girlfriend- and she reeled at that as well. She had been dating _The Spinner_ of all people?

But she had been dating Robert- the man behind the mask. The sweet man, who left flowers on the table, loved books as much as her, was such a gentleman, who had tragically lost a son. (and the implications of that and of The Spinner’s son were now swirling around her mind…)

But he was also the Spinner- someone who could challenge her abilities, who she could talk with, really talk with, about all that she was and all that she could be.

He had lied to her, lied about everything, but no more than she had lied to him. No matter what he had done, as the Spinner or as the Dark One, he was still her Robert.

But what, then, was Blue doing?

Time was still slowed, an instinct she had acquired and was severely thankful for. She carefully reached into Blue’s pocket, drawing out the camera phone she had clearly been searching for.

Phones were something most supers carried, but camera phones? The risk was too high for someone trying to take pictures of unmasked supers to stay around cameras for long. They had it bad enough with the press, but a super with a camera?

Had she _planned_ this? Had she planned to get the Spinner unconscious, remove his mask, and then take a picture of his face to send to all the corners of the world?

She couldn’t ask at this pace of time. Keeping the camera phone in the tight grip of her hand, she placed herself between Blue and the Spinner’s prone body, and gradually, reluctantly, let time flow again.

Blue looked at her with indignant confusion as the hands in her pocket closed over empty space and her eyes focussed on an angry Thorn standing between her and the Spinner.

“What are you doing?” Belle asked, her voice low and quiet and with a dangerous edge.

Blue huffed, and flew up higher slightly, now towering over Belle. “Thorn, could you give me my phone back?” Her voice was laced with equally dangerous venom. “Please?”

“Not until you tell me why you deemed it necessary to remove another super’s mask in public. You’re lucky we’re not near any civilians.”

Blue looked at her as if the answer were obvious. “Thorn, that man is responsible for so many crimes in this city over the last fifteen years. We cannot allow him to escape again, and the easiest way to find him again is to record what he truly looks like.”

“You’re breaking the code, Blue! You can’t! No matter what he has done, no matter who he is or was or will one day be!” Belle’s voice rose to a shout, and the man behind her started to stir in the corner of her eye.

Blue’s expression grew murderous. “I simply have my priorities in the right order, Thorn. Give me the camera. Now!”

In the blink of an eye, Belle dropped the camera and crushed it with her boot, the plastic and glass and electronics crunching against the concrete.

Blue gave a screech of anguish, and tried to divebomb Belle, but she dodged out of the way, picking up Robert on the way past. He startled at being picked up bodily, but looked around with wide eyes over her shoulder as Blue started to fly after them, chasing Belle out of the compound and down the road.

Robert looked at Belle, then back at Blue flying after them, then back at Belle, tugging on the bracelet on his wrist not coming off. The confusion was evident on his face, but it then settled, as if he twigged that then was not a good time to ask why she was carrying him away from Blue.

“Is there any chance you could get us out of here a little bit faster?” He asked, his voice in her ear slightly unexpected and distracting, still using the higher voice the Spinner used despite having lost everything else hiding who he was. There was no need to give the Blue Fairy more clues as to his identity, she supposed. With a thought, she slowed time to a standstill and kept running, Robert held securely in her arms and the Blue fairy behind her suspended in the air, an expression of fury on her face, as if the wind had changed and left her that way.

Well, it sort of has, Belle thought as she sped down the still streets away from a new enemy.

 


	12. The Unexpected Kindness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of the discoveries in chapter 11...

She ran for a good 20 blocks before slowing again in an alley. Robert clung to her as she ran, not moving for the reason of her speeding up impossibly fast, but his steady weight in her arms almost an anchor as she moved faster than humanely possible. He was a lot lighter than Snow, but then he wasn’t nearly as physically fit as Snow was, the lack of muscle mass the main reason for his lack of extra weight. The man in her arms and clinging to her neck was barely skin and bones.

As she came to a steady halt, she checked the alley for cameras and observers; thankfully, there were none, and she stopped to gently set Robert on his feet.

He promptly turned around and retched into a nearby dustbin.

“It’s okay; the dizzyness will pass.” She whispered soothingly, rubbing his back as he gripped the sides of the bin so hard his knuckles turned white; he continued to attempt to keep the contents of his stomach for another minute or two before turning to face her again, straightening up, and gesturing with his arm to the bracelet still clinging to it.

“I take it you know how to remove these?” He said, but was a lot quieter and meeker than he had been a scant five minutes earlier. The stripping of his abilities and the ability to hide his identity obviously hit him quite hard, even if it was temporary, and she felt a pang of sorrowful sympathy clench her insides.

Reaching into one of her pockets, she drew out one of her plain, standard-issue emergency masks, handing it to him with barely a word. He looked surprised, hesitating.

“What?” She said as he declined to take it from her offering hand after a few seconds.

“I… Why are you doing this, Thorn?” He asked, voice barely a whisper. “Why would you help an enemy?”

She considered him for a moment before responding. There was panic and terror in his eyes- she could destroy him in a moment if she chose to. Tears welled up in her own.

“There’s a code for a reason, my mother taught me that from the moment she knew what I could do.” She replied, voice a soft murmur. “I grew up with tales of chivalry and knights, of princesses and sorcerers and adventure, of heroes and villains. But I always knew that the best of the heroes always stuck to their principles, always looked after those in need, no matter who they were.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past five minutes, it’s that Blue is not a hero. I was wrong; I put my faith in the wrong person. But you shouldn’t have to suffer for that, whether you’re a villain or a pawnbroker or a lawyer or all of the above.”

He looked at her, searching her masked face for any sign of a lie, but then relented and took the mask, sliding it into place over his eyes.

“Do you…” he cleared his throat. “You clearly know who I am. I guess there’s no harm in bringing you back to my lair now…” He still seemed nervous, as if he was about to jump out of his skin at any moment.

“Okay, then, R- Gold.” She said, barely catching herself in time to not use his first name. Everyone who was anyone except her called him by his surname, and he didn’t let anyone else she’d ever known use his first. He would work out who she was in a flash if she used it, and she didn’t fancy the inevitable turmoil of her roommate discovering her identity just yet. She was confused as it was. “Do you want to lead on? Where do we need to go?”

“My shop.” He replied. “My stuff’s under there. We should be safe there.”

“Okay…” she muttered, thinking. “I guess you usually enter and leave under an illusion so no-one sees? I could probably speed us inside if you want to keep your identities separate.”

“What?!” He looked at her with disbelief. “You’re really going to help me get back?”

“I’ve helped you this far, Gold.” She replied. “It would be quite counterproductive to not get you to safety. Otherwise you’ll get discovered and attacked the moment we leave this alleyway, and that’ll complete Blue’s work for her.”

“Okay.” He said meekly. He reached into a concealed pocket, withdrawing a small, well-worn brass key. “This will let you into the back door of the shop.” He said. “You’ll need to draw the blinds when we get there, I suggest using your powers to speed us into the back of the shop, and then letting me deal with the security to get us into the more secure parts of my hideout. We can remove the bracelet and plan our next moves there.”

“Sounds good.” She replied, and held out her arms again. He grimaced.

“Do we really have to do this agai-” Robert let out an undignified yelp as she brought an arm around and under his legs and upper back, lifting him up again, key balanced in hand, and sped off again before he could reply further.

She was starting to tire as they approached the shop, and she almost dropped the key when trying to unlock the back door with Robert still in her arms. Eventually, however, the lock clicked and she maneuvered herself and the man in her arms through the door, still at speed, depositing him on the conveniently-placed cot. She raced around the shop, locking the door and closing the blinds before coming to a stop before the cot and letting time go again.

Robert sagged against the cot, eyes blinking with the sudden change in light and put a hand across his mouth, clearly trying not to retch again. This time he succeeded.

He slowly moved his legs off of the cot, wincing slightly as he stretched the leg with the brace out (what she had felt around his ankle the day of the kiss made a lot more sense now she knew who he was).

“Where to now, then?” She asked as he eased himself to his feet, taking the key she offered and returning it to his pocket. He moved swiftly across the room without replying, stopping in front of a particular shelf to turn back and look at her.

“What I show you behind this is not to be shown to any other super, friend or foe or otherwise, understood?”

“Of course.” Belle replied, voice as serious as his. Satisfied, he turned back to the shelf, moving a teacup to reveal a biometric scanner. He placed his thumb to it, and a beeping sound was her only warning as a part of the floor drew back, a wooden staircase appearing. He moved to go down, but then stopped and gestured for her to descend first.

“After you, rosebud.” He gave a crooked half-smile that she recognised from her date with him on Friday, and her heart clenched with all the things she couldn’t tell him. Oh, why on earth did she have to go and fall in love with a super, and a supervillain at that?

And when had she started thinking of herself being in love with Robert, rather than just having a crush on him?

She had been doing so well up until today.

The stairs creaked alarmingly as she descended, clinging onto the wooden banister, but she hardly noticed as she looked around at the area revealed to her.

It was _busy_ , that much could be said; every corner was filled with trinkets and gadgets and this and that, much like the back room of his shop, she supposed, but everything down here was far far more useful to the average super than anything that could be found above.

There were at least five jetpacks stuffed in a corner in varying states of repair; a computer with more hard-drives attached than a normal person could hope to fill with data in a thousand years perched on a (was that antique?!) desk; a pile of supersuits sat on top of a laundry basket, all with various rips and tears in, and bits of machinery and circuitry and cloth and tools were scattered across benches and desks and chairs.

And the amount of _paper_ piled on top of all _that_ -

She nearly collapsed back onto the stairs, colliding with Robert descending behind her.

“ _How_ …?!” She sat down on the steps, Robert joining her after pressing switches to turn on the lights and close the hatch with a control pad hanging precariously from a wire from the ceiling.

“How what?” He asked, seated beside her, clearly amused at her reaction.

“How in the name of heaven do you find _anything_ down here?” She asked weakly. She had had several other questions on the tip of her tongue, but they all fell away to let the least significant question crowd through.

“Generally by ruttling around in the area I last put it down, to be honest.” He replied, his weariness reflected in his voice. “I am a great advocate of the first available surface method of filing; it stops anyone who gets in from working out what I’m doing or how to find stuff. I do it in my shop above too.” He crossed the room to a kettle and tray with cups on it. “Fancy some tea? I need a cup if nothing else, after all that.”

She nodded. “Sure.” She crossed the room to help, and then tried to find another chair within the cluttered mess, eventually dragging over a stool so she could sit near his workbench while he prepared some tea.

“How do you take it? Milk? Sugar?” His voice wound through the air unexpectedly, and she was almost tempted to retort that he had been making her tea for months now, he should know it by now, but managed to hold her tongue at the last second.

“Erm, a glug of milk and two sugars.” She stammered out, and he gave her a look of confusion before silently preparing it and handing her the small blue and white cup filled with tea. He sat himself on the office chair by his workbench, dragging over a footstall and propping his ankle up. She started drinking her tea in silence as he worked the leg of his trousers up and his boot off his foot, slowly unclipping the brace from around his leg to reveal the twisted, mangled flesh of his ankle.

“I take it that brace is how you manage to hide the limp?” She asked.

“I can hardly walk otherwise, dearie. Being hit by a car at 60 miles per hour will do that to you, super or not.”

She looked at him, wide-eyed. “How the…?”

“I was trying to get my five year old son out of the path of said car while his mother was watching and without using my powers. Needless to say I couldn’t get myself out of the way in time as well.”

With a wince of sympathy, she made to place a consoling hand on his shoulder, but managed to stop herself before he noticed. It wasn’t like anyone who knew Mr Gold other than her would try to comfort him about it. They sank into an awkward silence again as he finished removing the brace, propping it up against his desk and pushing his chair across the room to retrieve a cane from an umbrella stand across the room, filled with identical looking canes she had seen him use before, dark wood and golden handles which didn’t quite match the feel of the rest of the basement.

He turned back to her once he had his cane in hand.

“Now, I have some questions for you before you leave.” His voice had the icy edge he used for confronting tenants at his pawnshop, the dangerous edge he had used with Blue earlier in the fight and at the masque ball. Instead of cowering like any of his tenants would, she rested her back against the edge of the workdesk next to her, casually putting the teacup in her hands down on the edge.

“I thought you might, after what happened. What would you like to know?”

He looked a bit perplexed at her acquiescence, but after a moment’s pause, leaned towards her, resting his weight on his cane, and continued;

“Why did you decide to protect the identity of your enemy?” At her look of incredulity, he answered with a frown. “Don’t give me that look. Your explanation is not good enough- I won’t accept any of this ‘oh, there’s a code that I’ll still follow to the ends of the earth!’ crap. There must be another reason, Thorn!” He pointed a finger at her accusingly. “Or maybe you’re her spy. Maybe you’re trying to get me to trust you, to tell you what I’m doing and why, so you can find the monster’s weaknesses! Huh?” He wagged the pointing finger in her face, but she batted it away.

“Stop it, Gold. You know me better than that. My mother would have my hide if I ever did such a thing!”

“Oh? What’s saying she won’t have your hide anyway, Thorn? Have you considered what story the Blue Fairy is going to bring back to those dim-witted colleagues of yours? Of how you defected and decided to side with a supervillain? Huh?” He leaned back to consider her. “Either you’re going to be announced as a villain in the papers tomorrow morning, or Blue’s going to shut up so you can continue your spy work. Either way, your actions today aren’t going to have won you any friends on either side- the villain community doesn’t take kindly to traitors.”

“I’ll just have to show the super community a different side to the story then, won’t I?” she retorted, though inside she was panicking a bit. His words were frighteningly accurate- what had she done?

“How do you intend to do that? It’s your words against Blue’s.”

“Well, you want to bring the Blue Fairy down, right? We could work together.”

His lips curled into a snarl. “I don’t think so. I’m not trusting you with my carefully thought out plans, dearie. You, as of a few minutes ago, have proven that you can’t be trusted. What’s to say you won’t switch sides again once you know what I’m going to do?” She started to protest, but he held up a hand in caution. “Ah ah ah. Prove to me that you can be trusted, and we might be able to work together to bring down Blue. But if there’s even a whisper of news that you’ve gone back to the Blue Fairy, or if my identity hits the papers, you will never see me again, and I will take you down along with the Blue fucking fairy. Is that understood?” He had moved forward and was half-shouting, half-snarling in her face by the end of his speech.

She gave a small nod to show she understood, and he slowly backed off, caution in his face, as if she would attack or tear through his lair for clues at any moment.

“Do you have any other questions?” She asked slowly, methodically, cautiously, a harsh edge to her voice. It hurt that he didn’t trust her, it hurt to see the coldness he showed to everyone but her, but she couldn’t show it. She couldn’t appear weak. She couldn’t appear herself, which for once made her indescribably angry.

“Not for now.” He muttered quietly, as if he suddenly had realised how inappropriate his outburst had been. She had saved his identity from being splashed over the news not half an hour ago; it was no time to be accusing her of being a spy.

“Then I think it’s time I take my leave.” Belle said, an edge of coldness in her voice. “If you go change, and then unlock the doors, then I should be able to leave without your identity being compromised.”

He gave a nod, and motioned for her to turn her back as he changed. After a few minutes, she felt a tap on the shoulder, and there was Mr Gold, clad in his usual suit and cane in hand. She stood, and he stopped her with a hand before she made for the staircase again.

“I… I realise I might have been a bit hasty to accuse you of being a spy immediately, but you can’t be too careful in my line of work. In either case, would you accept my apology? And… and my thanks. For helping keep my identity secret.”

She gave a small nod of acknowledgement, fighting to keep a broad grin spreading across her face, fighting to not lean into the touch on her shoulder, and after a moment of no acknowledgement, he turned and went to open the doors, letting her go with not another word.


	13. The Capture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Belle falls on the wrong side of Blue's plans...

She woke up to a body covered in aches and pains the next morning. Groaning, she eased herself out of bed, listening to Robert taking a shower in the next room, and clumsily stumbled through to the kitchen to grab a bowl of cereal.

She had been very careful the evening before when coming in; she didn’t go by HQ that evening on the way home, instead stopping at a late-opening target to buy some inconspicuous clothes to change into before heading back to the apartment in civilian wear, her supersuit and mask stored in a newly-purchased rucksack.

Robert barely acknowledged her when she came in, too lost in his thoughts, drinking his way through an impressive number of bottles of scotch she hadn’t known that he owned. He didn’t notice the newly-brought clothes well outside her usual style, barely registering her saying goodnight and locking her bedroom door behind her.

She understood. He had been through a lot today, even though he didn’t think she knew about it. That was the trouble with her current situation; she could see the broken man from both sides of who he was, but the hurt he showed to one side of her could not be acknowledged as existing by the other. It felt like it was tearing her apart, and she spent the night tossing and turning.

She picked a set of clothes easy to change into that morning, and left anything that might identify her at home. She couldn’t risk heading back to HQ-

Wait. Her clothes, her purse, her ID, were all at HQ, waiting inanely in her changing room for her to come and collect.

Shit.

She couldn’t trust Blue any more, that was certain; Blue broke the code, and no hero in their right mind should stoop to such an action. If she convinced the others that Thorn had defected to villainy, the contents of her changing room could be searched. They would discover who she was.

She could go retrieve her things, she supposed, if she was quick. Which she was.

She left a note for Robert, saying she had to head into the library early, and left before he exited the shower, rucksack with supersuit slung over her arm. She would have to ask Robert if she could borrow a corner of his lair when he arrived at work.

The HQ was quiet when she zoomed inside. There was the regrettable lag of a few seconds from having to wait for lifts to move and doors to open and keycodes to be accepted, but she got into her changing room without incident. She stuffed her civilian items into the rucksack quickly, and was exiting the building not five minutes after she entered it, not a single super on her tail.

Well, that was one task down. The next was to find a safe hiding place for her civilian gear. She didn’t have a key, so couldn’t approach Mr Gold’s shop and get her things to Robert. Where else would work?

She needed somewhere away from security cameras, away from anywhere significant to her identity as Blue knew it or her secret identity if a friend told anyone.

After a few moments of deliberation, she zoomed back to the library. There was an attic there that no-one used, leading up to a broken clock-tower that hadn’t worked for a good thirty years or so. No-one would look there. No-one knew she even had a key, but it had come with the other keys to the library. She could hide her stuff in plain sight, as it were.

The library had just opened for business, the lights turned on for once seeming starkly odd, bright and cold. She was still at top speed, so none of the patrons saw her as she entered, made her way through to the back room, and unlocked the door leading to the cobwebbed spiral stairwell.

The attic room was very dusty, and she had to stifle the urge to sneeze more than once as she climbed up. Diffused light shone through the clock-face, dust covered the mechanism, cogs and wheels that should be grinding and turning were still and silent. She took off the rucksack and stuffed it into a corner, a gap in the machinery that wasn’t obvious to someone casually looking in the attic, before turning and leaving the attic almost as she found it. She locked the door behind her and left the library, only letting time return to its normal speed when she was an alleyway or two away.

Belle leaned against a wall to catch her breath. Long stints of temporal manipulation always took their toll, and she had been moving at a light jog for most of it.

A shadow fell over her as she was crouched against the wall, and she looked up to see a dark figure looming. She didn’t quite have the time to slow time down, and before she could react a long, cloaked arm grabbed her wrist, closing a leather bracelet over it. She felt a shudder run through her body, ice trickling down her spine, and then the figure’s other hand formed a fist, colliding with her head in a sickening crunch. She remembered no more.

 

***

 

She woke strapped to a chair, her head pounding, and a bright light pointed directly in her eyes. She quickly moved her head to look down, but her wrists were tied behind her, out of view. She could, however, feel the coarse leather around her left wrist that rendered her powers useless. She tried to look around the room next, but the light in her eyes prevented her seeing much in the darkness around.

A movement in the shadows was her only warning that she had company.

“Who’s there?” Belle asked, her voice catching with fear. She couldn’t escape, not with her wrists tied and without her abilities. Whoever it was didn’t want her dead, though she noticed her mask was still in place. They weren’t desperate enough to have broken the code to get her identity yet, then. Unless they had removed it while she slept to take pictures before replacing it, but there was no point breaking the code if she wasn’t roaming the streets. Releasing footage of who she was now meant she had some time to go to the police and get under witness protection before anyone came after her or her own, and her parents knew the drill; if any news of her true identity hit the media, they were to go to the police immediately for protection. Her mother could protect them, anyway.

After a moment of silence, the Blue Fairy walked out into the light.

“You just can’t get the heroes these days, can you?” Blue said, her voice mocking. “They never know when to just shut up and let the experienced heroes get on with what’s necessary to bring down the people making the world an awful place.”

“Blue, you can’t just break the code like that!” Belle protested. “There are reasons we have these masks on, you know. That man could have a life. A family. A girlfriend, a son perhaps, all innocents. Don’t you think the other villain’s won’t come after him if they know who he is? They will attack the innocent, kidnap his children, destroy his hope.”

“That’s exactly what I was counting on, Thorn.” Blue replied, leaving her gaping at her. “While the Dark One knows to keep an eye out for us superheroes, he’s less likely to anticipate an attack from the other side. I have sources in the villain community who would love to know who he really is, track him down while he sleeps and slit his throat. A much more painless end to the Dark One’s attempts to rise again, don’t you think?”

“Oh, so you’re just sourcing out the illegal assassination of supers you don’t like to villains willing to do it so you don’t have to dirty your hands in full view of the media and the city?” Belle scoffed. “You’re not a hero at all.”

“My work, I’d have you know, is for the greater good of the city.”

“Your ‘work’? Seriously?” Belle said sarcastically. “Do you even remember why the code was put into place? To protect supers from each other, to protect their families. Do you think the supers you give the photos to will stop with slitting just his throat? They would kill anyone related to him too, or maybe just kidnap him in his sleep for their own sinister ends. What makes you think you can get supervillains to do exactly as you say, huh?”

“I can rid the city of the menace of supers who will not follow the decrees of the supers in charge. That’s all. It’s for the good of everyone.”

“No it’s not.” Belle said, her voice quieter. She then looked up again. “So if you’re such an all-powerful dictator of the city now, why am I here, rather than out on the streets enforcing your control of the city, huh?”

Blue gave a wry smile, more of a grimace. “Well, I can’t have you telling the people of the city that I broke their little code, especially the other supers at HQ. It’s not like any of them would believe you- it’s your word versus mine- but I can’t have the seeds of doubt sown among them. The supers under my charge must stay united if they are to combat the menaces of the villains around in an efficient and timely manner, and so you must stay silent, at least until the problem of the Spinner is dealt with anyway.”

“What motivated you to stop me from getting identification, anyway?” She suddenly asked. “It’s not like you have a vested interest in the man.”

Belle stayed silent, her eyes firmly cast at the floor and trying to keep the emotion from her voice. “He reminded me of a friend, that’s all. I don’t see why being merciful is so punishable amongst the heroes. We all have our secrets, and he deserves to have his kept safe.”

Blue’s face flashed with anger. “You’re keeping _his_ secrets now? What are you, his accomplice?! Secret keeping is all very well until it puts the city in danger, Thorn! Tell me, what do you know?” Blue ceased her face, a firm grip on Belle’s jaw forcing her to meet her eyes.

“I… I don’t know what he’s planning specifically. I can guess as to his intentions, though- he’s going to stop at nothing to bring you down, and with good reason.” Belle replied, hesitantly. Blue whirled away in anger, releasing Belle forcefully, almost tipping her chair over.

“Guards? Take her to a cell. Out of my sight. She’s a traitor, and deserves to rot for eternity.” A pair of steps sounded on the concrete floor behind her, a whoosh sounded through the air, and pain once again exploded behind her skull, the world going blissfully dark once more.


	14. The Prodigal Son

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Belle has a very interesting imprisonment...

Belle opened her eyes again to another raging headache. Sitting up slowly, she noted that this time her limbs were not fastened to a chair, that her hands were free. She was in a small-ish room, lying on a threadbare mattress that hardly deserved the name, bars separating her from the door and from another cot and another figure curled up on that cot, arms around knees and head tucked in as if to protect himself from the outside world.

The door, she noticed, was not locked, but the cell she was in had a hefty padlock and chain barring her from opening the door and leaving, and the leather bracelet was still around her wrist, the sewn edges starting to bite into her skin and make it itch uncomfortably.

She looked across to the other cell. The occupant, a man in his twenties with a scruffy beard and a resigned demeanor, didn’t appear to have noticed her. Maybe he was used to the occupants of the other cell coming and going. Well, she would need an ally to get out of here. No time like the present to introduce herself.

“Hello?” She asked. For a moment, there was no sound from the other cell, but slowly, the man uncurled himself from his position on the cot and looked across at her.

She started; he had the same deep brown eyes as Robert.

“I was wondering if I’d get another talkative cellmate.” He said, his voice slightly husky with traces of a scottish accent. “What did you do to piss off the Blue Fairy, I wonder?”

“Oh, just stopped her taking a picture of an unmasked supervillain. You?”

He chuckled. “I like your style. It’s a long story- are you sure you want to hear the whole tale, darlin’?”

“It’s not like I’m going anywhere fast, is it?” She replied, sitting down on the cot in her cell. “I’m Thorn. I don’t suppose you have a name?”

He shrugged. “I haven’t given Blue my name and don’t fancy giving her it, so I guess all you need to know is that I’m the son of the Dark One.”

She gasped. “I thought you looked familiar!” She cried out. “He was the supervillain I stopped Blue from identifying. She saw his face but didn’t get a photo, thankfully.”

“You know my father?!” He exclaimed. “Don’t tell me he’s up to the same awful stuff he was doing before…”

“He’s not as bad as he once was, no. He’s sticking to minor theft at the moment.”

“Oh thank God.” He said, burying his head in his hands. “I hardly dared to hope. Blue only started coming to see me again last month, tried taunting me that he hasn’t changed, that what I did to save him wasn’t worth it.”

“He has a whole new life now, other than trying to take revenge for your ‘death’.”

His head snapped up. “What?! He thinks I’m dead?!”

She gave a small nod. “He has for years.”

He scoffed, trying to play it off, but she could see the sadness and worry in his eyes. Before he could make some disparaging comment, she continued, “The entire world thinks the Dark One died ten years ago, but now your father is back again as the Spinner. So what on earth happened? How did you get here? And how is Blue involved?”

He sighed, and settled back against the bars, pausing for a second before starting his tale in a small voice.

“Papa and I moved here from Scotland some 15 years ago, right after he divorced mum. I didn’t know at the time, but he came here to create a super identity and use it to obtain enough money for us to survive safely in this new world. He became the Dark One, taking his mask and supersuit from some poor sod called Zoso who just wanted to get out of the business.

I discovered who papa was when I started manifesting the same powers as him- telekinesis and creating illusions. He was able to teach me how to use them, but when I found out who he was, I urged him to retire. Being a super was far more dangerous ten years ago than it was now- my father managed to break his ankle badly again in a fight with another super, and didn’t have any allies with healing abilities at the time. He had a fight scheduled with the Blue Fairy while his leg had him in hospital, and Blue was vicious- she wanted the Dark One gone for good. She wouldn’t stop trying to track down my father and kill him if she had the chance.

“So I stole my father’s mask, my father’s supersuit. I used illusions to make it appear as if I were him, and went to face Blue in his stead. The cameras watched as I used my illusions to pretend to die, and left when they saw Blue send a javelin at my head. Thankfully, I was short enough at the time that it passed through the illusion rather than through me, embedding itself in the wall behind.

“The cameras left after my ‘death’, and it was my intention to sneak away once Blue had gone. However, she was smart. She fastened a power-blocking bracelet around my arm, and took me away, leaving my mask for the police to find.

“I only heard from her afterwards that the police used DNA profiling to match the dead Dark One’s DNA up to mine. I was assumed to be the Dark One, my death certificate filled out accordingly. My father, in hospital, was assumed to be innocent. He went into witness protection, a system that Blue thankfully doesn’t have her sticky paws in, and vanished from her radar before I revealed who the true Dark One had been.

His next words were hesitant, dragged from his lips with some reluctance, like memories best left buried.

“She tortured me. For information. She thought I was the Dark One and wanted- wanted names. Places. To know who was behind the masks, where to look and who to look for. Eventually I let slip that I was, in fact, not the Dark One. I n- nearly died that day, she was so angry.

“Since then I’ve been locked up down here. She thought I would be useful, someday, should my father ever make another appearance in the city, under his previous pseudonym or another.”

Belle sat in silence for a few seconds, before reaching a hand through the bars to grasp tightly at his own.

“I’m so sorry.” She said, quietly, her voice breaking. Blue was not the person she had thought she was, and she felt sick. She had followed someone who had tortured a child…

“We need to get out of here.” Belle said, the conviction firm in her voice. “There’s no time to lose. Your father will be looking for you; for us. Or he will be going after Blue. We need to get out, to stop him before something bad happens.”

“How?” He said, watching as she leapt off her cot to cross the cell, looking carefully at the padlock holding the cage shut. “We don’t have our powers, and we’ve got no way to get these power blocking bracelets off from in here…”

She ran her hands through her hair, searching, and eventually found a pin, pulling it out. “I wouldn’t be too worried. My power is temporal manipulation, and I’ve used my extra time to learn a few… unorthodox… skills in my time.” She set to at picking the lock, and it opened after a few seconds of careful ruttling.

He looked impressed, but kept a worried watch up and down the corridor as she worked on opening his cell. Eventually the padlock opened with a soft click. He stepped out, looking around the room, and then pushing a sleeve up to reveal the bracelet he wore.

“Do you by any chance know how to get these off?” He whispered. She nodded, motioning for him to turn his hand over, revealing the clasp with thumb-shaped divots in the metal. She pressed her thumbs to the divots at each side, and the bracelet opened under her touch.

“They weren’t designed for prison use, but can only be removed by someone else. That’s why super prisons tend to be full of isolation rooms, so they can’t remove each other’s power blockers. Can you do mine?” She said, offering the clasp of the bracelet on her own wrist. He silently pressed his thumbs to it, and it opened much as hers did.

“We’d better keep these- they might be useful later.” He said, stuffing the discarded bracelets in a pocket before turning to the single door further down the corridor. “Do you know the way out?”

“No, but you can use illusions, right? Would you care to make us invisible? I should be able to use my speed to take out any guards who spot us.” He nodded, and she saw a shimmer appear in the air around them. In mutual agreement, they set out through the door together.

The journey out the compound was very interesting to say the least; they got lost more times than she could count, the layout designed to deliberately confuse someone without a map, all grey corridors as if in a military compound. They met a few guards, but passed them by without harming them, silently waiting for them to walk past. After a while, they found a set of emergency stairs, and climbed up and up and up, a hatch eventually appearing and letting them out into a sparse forest and a starlit sky.

“Right. Where are we?” She muttered to herself.

Her companion looked around, eventually motioning her closer and pointing out the observatory. “I think you were right,” He said. “This is the old military base, just outside the city. It shouldn’t take too long to get back from here. Do you know somewhere safe we can go? Or where we can find my father?”

“I think I can do both, assuming he’s still at his shop at this time of night.”

“He has a shop? He never seemed like the type…” Her companion muttered, but was silenced by a look.

“Can you continue to keep us invisible on the way there?” She asked. “I could probably get there at speed on my own, but I don’t think we should separate yet, just in case Blue’s forces come looking for us.”

He nodded. “The illusion can be kept up as long as I can concentrate, which is a good long while if we’re not talking.”

“Excellent. We’d better get going, then- it’s going to be a long walk…”

They set off, ambling gently towards the glow in the night sky, the air shimmering around them.


	15. The Hatter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A quick pit-stop before the reunion...

The sun was starting to gently send rays of lighter and lighter blue across the sky from the east as they walked into the city. Belle suddenly stopped in her tracks a few blocks from Gold’s shop, however.

“What is it?” Robert’s son asked after a few more steps, noticing her stopping.

“We’ll need to get you a mask, I think.” Belle said. “And it might be worth doing that before we go talk to your father. You will need to be able to hide your identity if they somehow figure out Gold’s identity as the Spinner and come after him, and thusly, you.”

“No-one’s seen my face in ten years, Thorn.” He complained.

“Blue’s seen your face. Her guards from the compound have seen your face. And she’s seen your father’s face too, so I have no doubt that she’ll have put two and two together and now knows to look out among the civilian population for you, because if she finds you as a civilian she will probably find your father. You need to get around the city with no-one identifying you by sight. Hence, you need a mask, and I think I gave my emergency mask to your father.”

He gave a sigh. “Okay, then. Is there anything stopping us waltzing into a government building to pick one up there?”

She frowned at him. “Erm, instant arrest for being a ‘supervillain’? Blue has contacts within most government offices- she’d be onto us like hawks. It would work if it was the masque ball, she couldn’t touch us there, but the next one is not for another three weeks, and it’s a little harder to get into if you don’t have an invitation. As a non-registered super they’ll be a little hard for you to find.”

A huff of agitation passed his lips, reminding her so much of Robert that she giggled, but the giggle was quickly cut off by an angry glare from him. Eventually, he gave a sigh and spoke again.

“I… might know of someone who can help us. Is Jefferson still at his former address in the city centre?”

“Jefferson? The Hatter? I… believe so, but he hasn’t been in the mask making business for years. His reputation is in tatters.”

“He’s still in the business, or so my other cell-mates have told me over the years.” Robert’s son said as they started walking again, the shimmer of invisibility still surrounding them. “He just doesn’t do jobs for anyone other than the truly desperate, and all things considered, that’s a category we currently fall into.”

He looked at her, searching her face for agreement with his plan, and eventually she gave a small nod, and they started in the direction of Jefferson’s.

 

***

 

Belle had expected to see a shop, much like the one Granny used to run her business from. Instead, they arrived at the front of a small townhouse in the suburbs, the lower set of bay windows boarded up, the whole street giving off an aura of run down decay. Robert’s son let the illusion around them go with a gentle motion of his hand, before reaching up and ringing the doorbell.

It was a few minutes before they saw any sign of life in the house- Belle was about to say they should try somewhere else- but the sound of keys clicked in the lock, and the door creaked open, revealing a nervous looking man wearing a worn suit and a top hat at a strange angle. The door was immediately opened further upon seeing Robert’s son, the man’s expression changing to one of joy and his arms going out to hug her companion, who stood quite stiffly as he did so. She got a distinct wiff of alcohol as he gave Robert’s son a bear hug.

“Baelfire! It’s so good to see you! I was wondering what happened back then, they never produced a body! How are you?”

“Don’t _call_ me that, Jefferson, you know I never liked that name.”

“What? Not use the wonderful scottish moniker your dear old dad bestowed on you?” he gasped, mock offended. “Your father will hear about this, you know.”

“Not just because of that!” he huffed. “Thorn here didn’t know, and I wasn’t planning on enlightening her just yet.”

Jefferson froze, panic on his face. Belle reached out an arm to Baelfire’s shoulder. “It’s okay, Baelfire. I already know your father’s identity, anyway; it’s not that big a leap to find out your name, of all things. I was probably going to find out at some point. Now, shall we continue this _inside_ , where Blue or Blue’s contacts won’t be able to see us, hmm?”

She guided Baelfire inside, following a still slightly stunned Jefferson, into what looked like an exploded mish-mash between a bachelor’s pad and the aisle of dolls and barbie products from a toy store, the pizza boxes and unwashed laundry stark against the riot of pink toys strewn across the floor, the dolls all meticulously clean and perfectly dressed in their correct outfits despite being haphazardly left across the carpet.

“Have a seat.” Jefferson said after a minute, nipping across the room to shove pizza boxes onto the floor, clearing space so that Belle and Baelfire could perch on the old floral-patterned couch. Once they were seated, he plonked himself on the only chair devoid of takeaway boxes stacked on top, and looked at them expectantly.

“Well? What can I do for the pair of you?” He asked, a chipper edge to his voice.

“Baelfire needs a mask. Probably a full super suit and identity, if you can manage it. And I probably need some spare masks too; I can’t exactly go to my usual mask makers.”

“Ooh, a job, a job for the disgraced mask maker, is it?” He clapped his hands together, delight on his face. “Why, I don’t get any clients other than the former Dark One these days! This is wonderful news!”

“Wait- you make Mr Gold’s masks?” Belle said, curiosity brightening her face.

“Is that the moniker my father’s going by these days? Oh, lord save me.” Baelfire said, hand going to his forehead in mock despair. “He always had a flare for the dramatic. He should pick ‘Rumplestiltskin’ as his next super identity and save everyone a lot of trouble.”

“He changed his name?” Belle asked.

“Well, duh.” Jefferson said, eyes wide and inquisitive. “Ever since Baelfire here ‘died’ he’s been going under another name. He got the police to take him under witness protection so that Blue couldn’t track him down if she ever realised that she got the wrong man- well, boy at the time, wasn’t it?” He twisted his head to look at Baelfire for a minute before returning his attention to Belle. “But I’m curious- how do you know the Spinner’s identity?”

“What have you heard from the media, first things first?” she replied, tension running through her shoulders. How careful would she have to be in public now? Had they found her stash of civilian clothes and objects?

“Well, within the last couple of days the police have issued an arrest warrant for the super Thorn, on the basis of evidence provided by the Blue Fairy that she knowingly and willingly aided the escape of known criminal mastermind and super The Spinner, who is evidenced to be the super formerly known as the Dark One. There’s a warrant out for him too- they’re charging him with all the crimes from his previous stint at supervillainy too. I’m quite interested to learn how all that came about, since the man himself isn’t answering his bloody phone.” Jefferson settled back into his chair, steepling his fingers and clearly waiting for an answer.

“Blue’s not the paragon of civilization and goodness she makes herself out to be, is what.” Her answer elicited a snort of laughter from both men, and she paused before Jefferson motioned for her to continue.

“We were in a fight, and he was knocked unconscious, so couldn’t use his abilities to hide his identity. The Blue fairy put a power blocking bracelet around his wrist and took his mask away. She was intending to take a photo of his face and spread it around the internet, but I stopped her before she could do so and got him away before she could call for reinforcements. I guess she took a dislike to my actions; I was caught off-guard and kidnapped, but met Baelfire in some cells she was keeping us in beneath the old military base and we just managed to escape.

I know his identity because I have met the man in my normal, non-super life. I won’t elaborate exactly as to how I’ve met him before; I would like to keep my identity secret if I can, especially if the Blue fairy is on my tail. My mum’s retired, but that probably won’t stop Blue going after her if she knows my identity.”

Jefferson looked pale; the subject of secret identities being accidentally revealed and families being targeted was clearly one close to his heart. He cleared his throat before answering.

“Well, there’s no sign in the media or among the super community that anyone knows who you are as a non-super, so I think they should be safe. Besides, your mother is a super, she’s been through this whole rigmarole before; she knows to get to the police if there’s any sign of her secrecy being compromised. If there’s one thing I know from my time working with Rose, it’s that she was smart.”

“You… you worked with my mother?”

He nodded. “Made her every costume. I think I’ve still got some of her designs in my portfolios, actually… would you like to see?”

She nodded, a smile on her face as Jefferson offered her a hand up and led her through to another room, Baelfire silently following after her.

The room they entered reminded her of Granny’s mask-making room, but unlike the room they had been in previously, this one was the paragon of order; every thread, every ribbon displayed on spindles across the wall, arranged in a rainbow of colour across the room. A large table for fabric cutting dominated the end of the room, with drawers beneath crammed with paper and files. Mannequins with beautiful dresses and dress suits the likes she had never seen before were arranged across most of the rest of the floor as if a miniature masque ball was being held in the room, and the other wall had shelves, stacked high with bolts of coloured and patterned fabric in a matching rainbow to the threads and ribbons on the opposite wall. It was a tailor’s paradise, a mask-maker’s paradise.

Jefferson crossed the room to the cutting table as she gazed around the room in wonder, opening a drawer beneath it and rifling through to find a thick folder, crammed with thick A3 sheets of paper, and passed it to her with a flourish and a bow.

“He’s almost as flamboyant as your father.” Belle muttered to Baelfire as she looked through the portfolio. She remembered seeing a few of these, beautiful supersuits gracing the TV screens when she was a little girl, photos in the newspaper clipped out and pinned up to a wall in the study in the basement, her mother strong and graceful and beautiful, in her prime. And then there were the dresses; the masque ball organisers never let the press in to photograph the elegantly clad supers as they danced and whirled and gossiped and talked, but she could almost imagine that same strong woman gliding across the dancefloor in one of these creations.

Belle was snapped out of her reverie by Jefferson waving a hand under her nose.

“You know, I’ve still got most of the patterns for your mother’s supersuits, as well as the fabrics. You seem to have your mother’s figure, which makes our lives a lot easier: I could make you some new suits and masks; you’ll need them, given you’re not exactly welcome at HQ these days. And Baelfire, I’ve had ideas before for what sort of super identity you could have ever since your father first came to me for a new super identity; I’ve got a set of drawings over here if you’d like to look…”

And like that, the pair were swept up into a riot of designing and measuring and creating of suits and masks for the next several hours.

 

***

 

It was good that Jefferson was such a consummate professional, Belle thought. When it was time for her to get her face measured for a new mask, he discretely ushered her into a side room while Baelfire was busy stitching the side of one of his new suits together (”My father was always good with fabrics, with needle and thread; it was my great aunties’ fault. He taught me how to sew, so I might as well help make this process a little faster.”). She took her mask off with some trepidation as Jefferson closed the door, examining her face with practiced ease, hands twitching back and forth across her face with the tape measure.

“You know, in the talks I’ve had with the Spinner about his normal life, he has mentioned meeting a girl. Beautiful blue eyes, brown hair, an accent you wouldn’t forget… remind you of anyone?” He muttered as he worked. When he noticed her freeze in shock, he chuckled, and leaned down to whisper in her ear, “Your accent slipped once or twice while you were concentrating on cutting the pattern pieces out. Don’t worry; I don’t think Baelfire noticed, and I’ll keep mum for you.”

He leaned back, continuing to work on measuring her maskless face. “You might want to consider coloured contact lenses, though. Those eyes of yours are quite distinctive.”

She nodded, and made eye contact before she slid her mask back into place. “Thank you.” She whispered. “He means a lot to me. When I do let him know, I want to do it on my own terms, as gently as possible. I don’t want him to get hurt.”

Jefferson smiled, patting her on the shoulder. “I’m glad that you care for him so much. He’s a good friend of mine, and from what I’ve heard he cares for you very much too.” Before she could respond, he turned back to jot down measurements in a small notebook, absent-mindedly opening the door again so they could return to the Spinner’s son.

 

***

 

After a good day and night’s work, both Belle and Baelfire were clad in new supersuits and masks. It had been a long few hours- the three of them ordered pizza in the evening and crashed on the sofa for a few hours overnight before finishing the outfits as the first rays of sunlight peeped through the cracks in the boards across the windows.

Belle’s new suit was deep forest green and dark brown as before, but this time had roses embroidered in dark red threads across the fabric- a leftover bolt from one of her mother’s suits had gone into it’s making. A matching mask sat on her face, her other mask shoved in a pocket for emergencies.

Baelfire’s suit, on the other hand, was a riot of red and orange and gold licking across his torso on top of a plain black suit- a homage to his name, Jefferson said. Baelfire wasn’t that worried that anyone would make the connection with the former Dark One and with the man who had gone into witness protection after his ‘death’; instead they decided the symbolism, if they ever found out that Baelfire was the one who ‘died’, was more of a phoenix than any relation to his real name. They would introduce him to the super community as The Phoenix and see if the name stuck- there was always time to change it later.

They quickly bid Jefferson goodbye, setting out into the early morning streets invisibly to head towards Mr Gold’s shop. Belle didn’t know what they would find there, but she couldn’t wait to check that Robert was still alive and well and safe, and as Baelfire walked beside her, she reckoned he was just as nervous as she was.

“Do… do you think he’s going to be angry about what I did, Thorn?” Baelfire asked in a whisper after a while of silent walking.

“I’ll sock him in the jaw if he is.” Belle replied, and he nodded in agreement as they continued their walk towards the man they both cared so much about.


	16. The Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After visiting The Hatter...

They arrived outside Mr Gold’s shop when the sun was high in the sky, the streets around busy with tourists and commuters walking to and fro across the streets outside. The sign on the inside of the door was turned to ‘Open’, so Belle opened the door while they were still invisible and they entered.

Robert was standing behind the counter, furiously typing at the computer on the counter, concentration fierce. He didn’t notice the door opening and closing- mostly because Belle sped up so she could stop the bell above the door from jingling- but looked up as they approached him after the door closed. Maybe he could see the shimmer in the air much as he could. A frown crossed his face.

“Is anyone there?” He asked, loud enough to be heard within the room but not outside. She looked over to Baelfire, who was keeping them invisible; he made a series of hand gestures indicating that she should probably say something.

She cleared her throat, causing his gaze to focus roughly in her direction.

“Erm… It’s Thorn. I’m here with a friend, we need to talk.” He looked confused and wary.

“Does your _friend_ know who I am?” He asked, a cautious edge to his voice.

“Yes. He can be trusted, you have my word. Can we come through to the back? It’s not safe for us to talk here.”

He looked suspicious, but nodded, moving across the room to lock the door, close the blinds, and flip the sign before leading them through to the back room, the blinds also closed there.

“Well? Show yourselves.” He said.

Baelfire moved into his line of sight, removed his mask, and let the illusion surrounding the pair of them drop.

The wary expression on Robert’s face dropped instantly, hitting confusion and surprise and awe on the way to a stunned disbelief.

“B… Bae?” He whispered, voice hoarse and filled with emotion. “You… you’re alive? You’re real?” He slowly reached up a hand to cup Baelfire’s face.

“Hi… Hi Dad.” Baelfire said, voice breaking, and his father launched himself at him. The two men ended up kneeling together on the floor, clutching each other, sobs breaking through.

“I… I thought you were dead! I thought you were dead, Bae!”

“I love you… I love you so much, dad. I missed you so much…”

“I had hope, for a while… they didn’t find a body, so I had hoped… but after you didn’t come back, I thought you had died… properly, properly died. I thought I’d lost you forever, son.” Robert pulled his head back from his son’s shoulder, tear filled brown eyes now looking into tear filled brown eyes.

“The Blue Fairy captured me, dad. Held me prisoner for ten years. I only managed to escape yesterday thanks to Thorn here.” He indicated where Belle was standing a few feet away, and Robert stared at her over his son’s shoulder with a strange awe-filled look.

“I… I… Why? Why would you do this?” He asked, half wary and half disbelieving.

“Papa, you don’t need to question everyone’s every kind action.” Baelfire said. “She’s done what no other super opposing Blue has been able to do for the last ten years. This isn’t the time to interrogate her!”

She stepped forward, laying a hand on Bae’s shoulder in reassurance. “No, he’s right- your father deserves to know why I was in a position to rescue you.”

She took a breath before looking at Robert and continuing.

“You are perfectly right about the Blue Fairy being a distrustworthy individual. After I left, I went to remove evidence of my real identity from the superhero HQ, and shortly after successfully concealing it was kidnapped by one of Blue’s lackeys. During a subsequent interrogation with the Blue Fairy herself, it seems she wants to identify the supervillains she opposes as to farm out their assassinations to villains under her control, attacking them when they don’t expect to need to use their powers to keep themselves safe.

“I doubt she was planning to stop with you, Gold. I’m not sure if she’s compromised my identity during the process of my kidnapping, but thankfully the relatives I can be linked back to know the drill. I intend to send them a warning message when I have the time to safely contact them, but I left my phone with my other sensitive items in a safe and secret location, which probably needs changing.”

Baelfire was looking at her with some awe and admiration; Robert simply looked at her with worried suspicion.

“I that case, I would recommend you go undercover for a while.” Robert replied. “If your identity is compromised, you know the drill of going to the police and getting relocated, but that may take a while, so it would be good to start going through those channels now. In the meanwhile, the superheros have a warrant out for you, so be careful when and where you wear that mask.”

She nodded. It was good advice. “We still need to work together to bring Blue down.”

Gold shook his head. “I’m thankful that you’ve rescued my son, but that’s not enough for me to trust you to be someone I want to share my plans with, Thorn.”

Bae looked at his father with incredulity. “But Papa, she rescued me from Blue!”

He shook his head again. “She could be a spy, Bae. She could have helped you ‘escape’ deliberately on Blue’s orders. If I start telling her my plans now, she could bring them straight back to Blue. There’s no way we can work together.”

Belle nodded, causing Robert to raise an eyebrow. “He’s right, you know. He can’t trust me with his plans.” She turned back to Robert. “Although that doesn’t stop us creating new plans to bring down Blue.”

“I’m not going to risk my life- my son’s life- on that, Thorn. If you want to go up against Blue, go for it. But I will have no part in your plans.”

“But-” Her protest was cut off by a steely look from Robert.

He gave her an incredulous look as he stood up slowly, helped up by his son.

“That’s all very well, but I’ve got bigger fish to fry today, if it’s all the same with you. I may have been reunited with my son today, but my girlfriend has gone missing.”

“Missing?” Belle asked, trying to sound mildly curious while mentally kicking herself. She hadn’t been at the penthouse in at least two days and had been meant to meet up with Robert for lunch the day before yesterday. Of course he’d reported her missing.

“Yeah.” He said, a resigned expression on his face. He suddenly pointed a finger at her. “If this is your fault, letting Blue know who I am, letting her know who to go for-”

“Why would I do such a thing, Gold?!” Belle asked, her voice raised in frustrated anger at the accusation. “You’re one of the few people I can turn to now- the superhero community wants me in jail, I haven’t been able to go home to warn my parents or my boyfriend that they might be in danger yet, and you’re standing there accusing me of telling Blue who your girlfriend is? Honestly?! Gold, I’ve never been introduced to her, whoever she is! And I know how important it is to not give away the names of the people you love to other supers. We just got back from visitng Jefferson, for god’s sake!” She stopped her angry tirade, seeing Robert’s face drop from angry to dejected, her anger melting away to despair. How on earth would she be able to tell him the truth if he was this distrustful?

Her shoulder’s dropped. “I think I should probably go now.” She said quietly. “You two have a lot of catching up to do.” Robert nodded, and walked over to the back door, unlocking it and letting her out.

She turned back just before she left, Bae looking at her with concern but making no move to follow her. She turned to Robert.

“For the record, I hope you find your girlfriend soon. Good luck with avoiding Blue.”

He gave a small nod of acknowledgment, before she stepped out and the back door of Gold’s shop closed behind her.

She slowed time down to a crawl almost immediately, and headed for the library attic. She needed a better place to store her stuff, but that would have to wait. She could conceal her secret identity by speeding in and out of the library whenever she needed to switch identities from a few streets away, and she did exactly that this time, carefully bundling up her supersuit and stowing it in her rucksack, and redonning the crumpled civilian clothes from two days before. Her phone was long since dead, but she did have a new emergency mask to put in her purse before replacing the rucksack in the corner after removing all items pertaining to her normal identity and speeding out of the library again.

She let time go again once she had reached a concealed spot in an alleyway a few blocks from the apartment, looking carefully to make sure she was unobserved first. The walk from there to the penthouse was slow- the walk at speed from Mr Gold’s shop was a bit on the long side to do while slowing down time; she needed a closer place to change, really.

Not that it would matter for a little while. She didn’t particularly need to use her super identity for a while now, especially if it would get her into more trouble than necessary. She could move her supersuit to a new location without using it, since she could move at speeds where she was essentially passing by unseen in the streets, but the new location would require some careful thought. Lying low for a few weeks was the priority now- Blue would be looking, and it was essential that the people trying to find her both try and fail and give up before she resurfaced.

The penthouse was quiet when she let herself in, no flowers in the vase, dishes piling up in the sink, which was not surprising- Robert wasn’t the type to remember to do things if he was particularly worried or stressed, and she supposed a missing girlfriend was more worrying and stressing than most events. She made her way through to her bedroom to plug her dead phone into the charger, then went through to the kitchen to grab the apartment’s phone and type in the number of Robert’s mobile.

The phone barely got a chance to ring once before it was picked up, Robert’s voice on the other end full of nervous anticipation.

“Yes?”

“Hey, Robert, it’s Belle.” She said, letting the weariness of the past two days seep into her voice.

“Belle!” He exclaimed. “Where are you? Where have you been the last few days? What happened? Are you alright?”

“I… I’m at home. I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to tell you before I left. My mother had to go to hospital for a little while, and I needed to go see her, make sure she was okay. I meant to leave a note, did you get my note?” She felt like cringing at having to lie to Robert, but she needed to distance her disappearance from her alter-ego’s kidnapping over the same time period, and getting his mind away from doing the maths of how long she had been missing for was the key.

“… No, there wasn’t a note. Are you alright, Belle? I tried calling you more than once, and you didn’t respond. I was so worried!”

“I’m fine, just fine, Robert. I don’t recall you calling- hang on-” She moved her purse about near the phone’s reciever for effect, then returned it to her ear. “-Ah, here it is…” She gave a wince. “I think the battery must have died. I thought it was strangely quiet… I’m sorry!”

“No matter, sweetheart. Shall I meet you at home, then? I was about to head home anyway.” The worry was still there in his voice, but considerably lessened at her explanation.

“Sure. I’m at home already. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

“Okay. See you.” He hung up after a few seconds of silence, and she replaced the phone before putting her purse in her room and going to sit in the living room, waiting for Robert to get in.

Robert looked shattered a few minutes later when he came into the living room where she was sitting, as if he had ran the entire way from his shop the moment he had put down the phone. However, the smile he gave her the moment he saw her there, safe and well, could have outshone the sun. His cane clattered to the ground, and he limped across the room quickly over to her, and she stood to catch him in a hug as he reached her. He clung to her for a good few minutes before pulling back to look at her face, a hand tenderly tracing the line of her jaw.

“Hey… are you okay?” Belle asked, her gaze catching on his tear filled eyes.

“I… I was so worried, Belle. You were gone for so long…” His voice broke on his words, and she felt a pang go through her heart. No wonder he had been so brusque with her earlier when she was Thorn, if he was hiding this level of worry and panic for her.

“I’m sorry, I really meant to let you know. It was so sudden. I didn’t have a lot of choice other than to drop everything and go, and I didn’t realise until I was there that I left my phone charger behind and ran out of battery, and by then I was busy looking after mum.” She stroked his hair soothingly.

“I understand. Don’t worry too much, sweetheart. Just try and give me a little warning next time your mother needs assistance in an emergency, yeah? I could have lent you a car, gotten Mr Dove to drive you out there…”

“Thank you for being understanding.” She replied, leading him to sit down with her on the sofa. “I must admit, I was in somewhat of a panic at the time. My father has never been very good at coping with her when things do go wrong, and I didn’t stop to think, really.”

“What’s past is past.” Robert said, giving her another hug and a kiss on the cheek before drawing back again. “You must be quite hungry after your journey. Would you like me to order some food? And I should probably go call off the police on their search for you…” He said, a somewhat sheepish tone entering his voice.

“Sure… I haven’t had a chance to eat more than a few slices of pizza, and that was yesterday.” And with that, Robert limped through to the kitchen to make the calls, picking up his cane on the way past.

She was given a few minutes to sort through her thoughts, a few minutes she had been denied for a good while, with all the chaos of the last two days. Belle would need to call her mother sooner rather than later, preferably while Robert was out, to ask her to provide an alibi. Thankfully her mother had done this before and knew the drill- in fact, once upon a time Belle had done much the same for her mother when her superhero business kept her away from friends and family, giving her an excuse to drop out of contact for a few days while Belle was ‘sick’ and needed looking after at home. She was rewarded with a few days off school and free reign in a local bookstore shortly beforehand, and she remembered the ensuing days of pure uninterrupted reading with great fondness.

The evening passed quite quietly, the two of them picking at their takeaways and watching the TV, taking the time to just be together after the rollercoaster of the last two days. She decided she would stay away from her mask for a while- she needed time to gather her thoughts and drop off the radar, and she had other errands to run over the next few weeks while Robert made his mind up on whether to trust Thorn or not.

She hoped he would trust her. The other option was unthinkable.


	17. The Easing of Fears

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While laying low...

“Belle?”

“Yes?” She replied, watching as he struggled silently for a minute to articulate whatever he was going to say. It was about a week after she had returned from ‘visiting her mother’- thankfully after a quick phone call the day after her return her mother was ready and waiting with a spare cast to fit to her leg should Robert go investigating, but fortunately he was too preoccupied to look into it.

“I… I’m having a thought, and I was wondering if you could help me think things through a bit.”

“What was the thought?” She turned to him, paying attention with interest, closing her book gently and resting it on her thigh.

“Well… what would you do if, hypothetically, there was a person who knew a secret- a great, important, terrible secret- of yours and who you possibly needed to work with in the future. Would you trust such a person? Because I know I probably need to work with them if I want some really important plans of mine to come into effect, but I’m not sure I can trust them.”

She paused before replying- she would have to be careful. She knew this was about her alter ego, after all.

“Hmm… Have they given you any reason not to trust them in the past?”

He ran a hand through his hair, a frown creasing his forehead. “They used to work for a competitor of mine. The two of them don’t seem to be on good terms at the moment, however.”

Belle tapped her chin thoughtfully. “I guess it depends on how important this project is to you, then. I mean, from what you’ve said, I assume said great, important secret hasn’t been revealed by said person, so they probably can be trusted.”

“I’m still not sure I can trust them yet, Belle. What if they take my plans to the competitor of mine who I used to work for? If this project goes wrong, I will be ruined.”

She turned to him. “Would it help if I pretend to be said person? You can voice your concerns in the safety of home, and you can come to your own conclusions as to whether that’s the right path to take or not.”

He hesitated, but then gave a nod of agreement. “Fire away.”

“Okay, so I’m this person who knows a secret of yours, who used to work for your enemy. What do you want to ask?”

He rubbed the stubble on his chin for a moment, then started speaking. “What I really want to know is why you decided to stop my competitor learning more of my secrets. You betrayed your employer, and I don’t know why.”

“Well, maybe I found I had a conflict of interest. Just because I was employed by someone doesn’t mean I am going to continue to share their views and do their bidding for all eternity. People have been changing jobs, switching sides, for millenia. Maybe new information came to light. Maybe your secret was one I decided that my employer really didn’t need to know. I don’t know. What matters is that I am no longer an enemy of yours.”

He gave her a strange look, but then continued. “What if you are a spy, sent by my competitor to learn my secrets and ruin my life?”

“Why would I do that? There are easier ways, better ways, of infiltrating a rival organisation. If I was a known enemy before then I probably wouldn’t be employed as a spy, since I have known connections to your enemy. If they were to send a spy to learn your secrets, it would probably be someone who has no relation to the company at all, who you could put your trust in from the start.”

He nodded, looking thoughtful at her answer. “I guess that makes sense. But I’ve done quite a few things to push you away since you did switch sides. How on earth am I meant to say that I was wrong, that I need skills like yours for my plot? I’m not exactly in a position to publicly apologise, it would ruin my reputation among the business community.”

Belle thought for a moment before answering, “There’s nothing to say that you need to publicly apologise. Go to me in private and talk to me. It’s possible I still have contacts in my previous company that you would find useful- you could make me your spy, rather than me spying on you- though this will, of course, depend on how publicly I have left your competitor’s clutches. You’re not going to solve anything by sitting around and moping about how you can’t trust people left, right and centre. If nothing else, do it to prove to yourself that there are trustworthy people in the world, that not all hope is lost. If it does all go to pot, I’ll be there to help you, Robert. Don’t be afraid.” She stroked a soothing hand up and down his arm, but he remained lost in thought for another few minutes before raising his eyes to hers once again.

“Thank you, Belle. You’ve given me a lot to think about.” He pulled her close into a warm and comforting hug. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.” She heard muttered into her hair as they sat holding each other close on the sofa for a good few minutes more, listening to each other’s soft breaths and beating hearts.

 

***

 

Another week passed. Another masque ball was to occur in a week’s time, prompting a visit during the day while she was ‘working’ at the library to Jefferson’s again. She wore her emergency mask for the journey, and prayed she wouldn’t suddenly bump into Robert.

Jefferson was very accomodating, ushering her inside with not a word.

“Don’t worry; I don’t have any other appointments today, rosebud, and your Spinner’s booked in to sort out his masque outfit for Tuesday. It’s safe.” She gave a sigh of relief at his words, peeling off the plain black mask with some relief.

“Good, because these emergency masks aren’t half itchy.” Belle said, causing Jefferson to laugh before he led her through to the haberdashery. Several bolts of fabric were already laid out on the table, along with another new mask, leather with swirling thorns embroidered across it. Jefferson headed across to pick up the mask, handing it to her.

“Fancy trying this on?” He said, and she turned and put it on, examining herself in the mirror. The colour of the mask seemed familiar…

“Wait… what else have you used this particular fabric for?” She said, suspicion adding a harsh note to her voice.

“I… this mask might have come from me mucking about with the offcuts of creating _another_ pair of a certain gentleman’s trousers…”

She turned and dropped the mask from her face, punching him in the arm. “What do you think you’re doing, Jefferson? Are you _trying_ to give away my identity?”

Jefferson backed off, holding his hands up in a placating gesture. “Thorn, you know after what happened to my Alice and my Grace I would never do such a thing!”

She gave him a glare, and eventually he started speaking again.

“Fine. Maybe I had hopes to get the two of you working together a bit more. The Spinner deserves to know the truth sooner rather than later, Thorn. I promise that I will never tell him who you are, but he’s a good man, and doesn’t deserve to be strung along for too long. He’s a good friend of mine, has been for a good decade or so.” Jefferson’s eyes turned pleading. “He cares for you a lot. I would hate for that care to be destroyed by you leaving it too late to tell him the truth.”

She nodded. “It’s just that I’m afraid. We’re not even allies at the moment, he doesn’t trust Thorn. If I reveal who I am to him now I will lose the love of the man I love, and that would break me.” She gave him a pleading look, and he gently placed the mask down on the table, looking down, deep in thought.

“Well, we’ll just have to work on getting the Thorn and The Spinner to be allies then, won’t we?” He said, perking up a bit. “I’ll try and talk to him on Tuesday, make him see sense. And if we give you a stunning dress for the masque ball, that will surely help matters, will it not?” He gave her a cocky smile, and reached for the measuring tape. “I just want him to be happy, and he’s not going to be happy if the two of you can’t be honest with each other, so I am going to draw on every ounce of my meagre matchmaking abilities to see this through!” The man whirled about the room with purpose, and the two of them were quickly lost in the flurry of work designing her dress for the ball, the leather mask lying forgotten on the table.


	18. The New Alliance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another ball, another important meeting...

The next masque ball rolled around a few days later. This one filled her with a lot more trepidation than the last one, but fortunately she had made the excuse to Robert of having a ‘girl’s night’ at a friends. She made her way out the door a good hour before the start of the ball with a gentle succession of kisses and a promise to see each other later.

Jefferson had, as promised, delivered her dress to the library attic, mask and all, and she leisurely gave herself the time to get dressed and fix her hair and makeup in the closed and darkened library at normal speeds before zipping over to the city hall. Her dress this time was a deep blue, the navy of a night sky, with lace roses layered over the pleated folds of the bodice and skirt. The skirt went straight down and would have hit the floor if it weren’t for the matching navy blue heels she wore with the dress.

The city hall was decorated in much the same style as for the previous ball, this time with lilac and wysteria wound around the banisters and columns, the light purple and blue flowers lending a much different feel to this ball, the sweet scents combining and flowing through the air.

Her mask, while in some places navy blue, had dark green thorny vines winding across it, curling up her cheeks and past her eyes to twine together across her forehead. Some of the thorns stuck out the front of the mask and looked incredibly realistic, and she had put the mask on with some trepidation earlier- thankfully, the fact it covered most of her face made her pretty certain Robert wouldn’t be figuring out her identity this evening.

She saw Snow and Charming at the entrance as she went in, and crossed the pavement to greet them. Snow looked surprised as she walked up to them, Charming gained a frown.

“Hey, guys. Long time no see. How are things at HQ?” Belle said, the cheery tone to her voice forced. The fear running through her veins that her friends from HQ would turn around and reject her was making her head feel like it was vibrating.

“Thorn, what happened?” Snow asked in a small voice. “I get knocked out, and the next thing I know Blue’s telling me you’re now a supervillain, that you protected the Spinner and stopped her from capturing him! And the next day, your locker room is empty and you’ve got a price on your head? What happened? Where did it all go so wrong?”

Belle shrugged. “I put my trust in the wrong person at HQ, Snow. Blue isn’t the paragon of virtue she claims to be, she never has been. I… I learned a vital piece of information about the Spinner which changed my outlook on the operation entirely, but Blue disagreed with my reasoning. Has much else happened at HQ since I’ve been gone?”

Snow shifted back slightly, leaning into the solid form of Charming, wariness crossing her face. “I’m not entirely sure I should be telling you, given that you’re now on the wanted list.”

Belle’s face fell. “Please, Snow. I may not be working for Blue any more, but that doesn’t mean I’ve turned into a villain! You know it’s not safe for me to visit HQ at the moment, but that doesn’t have to stop me being the hero I’ve always been- I’m just a little more freelance now than I used to be, that’s all.” She looked at Snow and Charming with pleading eyes.

Charming was the first to break, stepping forward to put a hand on Belle’s shoulder. “It hasn’t been the same without you on the team, Thorn. Blue has been getting increasingly frustrated with us; she’s assigned about half of the active supers at HQ to track you and the Spinner down, but your encryptions on your work haven’t broken yet, and she doesn’t want to hire non-supers to break it, heaven knows why. Either way, you might want to sneak in and retrieve your computer and notes before too long, if you want to stay off the radar. The Blue Fairy is not a pleasant person to work for right now.”

Belle slapped her forehead in frustration. “I knew there was something I forgot!” She sighed. “One more thing to sort out, I guess. Is there a lot of security around it?”

Snow answered this time. “Blue had your stuff moved down to the high security vaults in the basement. I don’t know exactly where.”

Belle sighed again. “Okay. I guess I will have to deal with that soon. Is Blue coming to the ball tonight?”

Snow shook her head. “She’s still at HQ, trying to crack your code for your computer. I don’t think code-breaking is her strong point, to be honest.”

“Well, I put a lot of work into it, it should take a while to crack, even with super speed.” Belle replied, smirking to herself. The time spent studying code creation in several distorted hours had clearly paid off. “I’d better get going. I’ve got some important people to have conversations with.” And with that, she picked up her skirts and continued into the main ballroom.

As the last time she was here, the dancing had already started, skirts in various bright and beautiful colours whirling across the floor. She recognised several of Ruby’s designs this time, pages from portfolios Ruby showed her over lunches past before she had to leave HQ coming to mind. She missed Ruby and her grandmother. They were the people she could truly call friends at HQ, but she hadn’t gone to Granny’s in a while- it was evident Blue still didn’t know Belle’s identity, and her friends were keeping it that way, but there was no need to endanger herself by going to Grannys when she knew how many other superheros under Blue’s command frequented there. As Belle scanned the floor, she recognised quite a few of Jefferson’s designs as well- the man was busier than he appeared to be, it seemed.

She stood alone among the crowd for a good few minutes before spotting the deep red and gold suit and mask of Baelfire, and she wended her way around the floor towards him.

“Hey, how are you?” Baelfire asked as he spotted her approach. He looked at her with a curious expression. “It’s good to see you haven’t been captured by the Blue Fairy again.”

“Well, I’ve been keeping a low profile for the most part- waiting for the furore to die down until it’s a bit safer to use my mask again. How have you been?”

He gave a shrug. “Bit of this, bit of that. Mostly doing the paperwork with the police to give me a new identity. Luckily Papa’s been able to help with that quite a bit, despite the forms changing over the last ten years.”

“That’s good news.” Belle replied. “Are you expecting to stick around town?”

“I should be. Papa’s giving himself a new identity to use with mine so we could start anew someplace else if we can’t bring down Blue. He doesn’t particularly want to use it yet though- it would probably mean breaking up with his girlfriend, and she really means a lot to him, from the way he’s been talking about her.”

Belle nodded, attempting to remain indifferent. “I’ve heard him mention her a few times. So she’s why he’s still in town?”

“For the most part, yes. My Papa used to be a much harsher person when I knew him before. I think the years and this girl have done wonders to his temperament- I wish I could meet her some time, but Papa doesn’t want to endanger her by introducing her to another wanted super other than himself, just in case. He’s very protective- he was very protective of me when I was younger. Still is, to this day.”

“I’m glad she makes him happy.” Belle said, trying to keep the emotion out of her voice. “However, I didn’t come here for idle chit chat, delightful as your company is. Is your father around? I would like to speak with him if I can.”

Baelfire nodded. “He told me he wanted to talk to you this evening about something. I think he’s out in the gardens last I saw of him, and that was about twenty minutes ago or so?” He gestured out of the large glass doors towards the gardens out the back of the city hall, quiet and serene and dark.

Belle nodded her thanks, before turning and setting out into the twilight gloom.

It was a good five minutes before she found him, seated on a stone bench deep in the gardens, lost in thought. The cobbled paths were not easy or quick to navigate in the shoes she had chosen for the evening, it turned out. He watched her approach silently, and offered no word or gesture of protest when she sat down on the bench next to him, a few inches away.

She cleared her throat, then asked, “Erm… Bae said you wanted to talk to me?” He gave a quiet nod, and she sat watching as he cleared his own throat before going to speak. He seemed a little nervous, hesitating before starting on what felt like a prepared speech.

“I… I have had some time to think about your proposal, and I have been talking with various people I trust who have indicated to me that I might have been a little hasty in my decision to distrust you and accuse you of being a spy for Blue.”

“Oh? And which esteemed individuals have caused this about turn?” Belle asked.

“My girlfriend, mostly.” He replied with a sheepish shrug. “And my son. We talked at great length about how the two of you managed to escape, and I’ve spent some more time researching you, and thinking.

“I do have plans to bring the Blue Fairy down. Granted, when I first drafted them, I didn’t expect or plan to include the skills of any potential allies, because they have never been an option before- in my previous identity I spent most of my time working alone, which is the normal way for supervillains like me to operate. However, all my plans so far to bring her down have been unsuccessful, and knowing now that she plans to use less than scrupulous methods to stop the people she doesn’t like, the urgency of taking her down has increased somewhat.”

“Well, you’ll need some help, then.” She said, a small smile flickering across her face for a moment. “Am I any more trustworthy than I was a few weeks ago?”

“Given the news of who I truly am hasn’t been splashed across the newspapers and given that no-one has tried to murder me in my sleep, yes.” He gave her what looked like a grateful look. “I’m glad I don’t have to drop everything and move, and other people I trust within the super community have also talked to me about you favourably.”

“Ah… I take it Jefferson spoke to you then?”

He gave a small nod, then cleared his throat. “It appears I have him to thank for ensuring my son can use his powers about the city undetected and with a moniker of his own, which will be infinitely useful when it’s time to take Blue down. Jefferson was also insistent that I give you my thanks for rescuing my son from Blue’s clutches, which I seem to have forgotten to do when I spoke to you last.”

She waved off his apologetic look. “It’s all water under the bridge now. As a gesture of trust, I will give you a number by which you can contact my mother in an emergency.” She fished a small scrap of paper with the digits scribbled across, the digits for a mobile phone bought by her mother the previous week. “She will come to your aid if you call her, no matter what you ask, if I should be captured again or fall in battle.”

He looked at the small scrap of paper in the dim moonlight with interest. “You’re giving me the means to contact a retired superhero?” He asked.

“She’s still got her kit- I talked to her and she’s quite willing to come out of retirement if necessary to stop Blue. And phones can be traced, so you can find her, and by extension me, if you so choose.”

He crumpled up the paper and swallowed it without hesitation. She looked at him incredulously.

“What?” He asked, and when she didn’t reply, shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t need that information, Thorn. Rose is retired; she deserves to be able to live out her retirement in peace without fear of needing to go fight in our battles again. She was one of the few superheroes who stuck to the rules, who was a pleasure to face rather than a pain, much like yourself. I won’t leave the information as to how to find her around for anyone to find, including me.” His tone was serious, and he lapsed into silence after his small rant.

“Well… I… Thank you.” Belle replied after a moment. “I’m sure mum will be glad she’s not going to get any phone calls any time soon from that phone.”

He gave a nod. “I’d be interested to meet her again for old times sake someday if we survive this, but I’m not going to bring her into a fight which isn’t hers.”

“If we survive this?” Belle asked, sitting up and turning to watch him, hope in her voice.

He turned to her and nodded. “Well, after that eloquent speech about being wrong about mistrusting you I can’t exactly kick you out of helping me take Blue down, now, can I?” He asked, voice high and implike but with traces of the amusement of the man underneath.

She launched herself at him in a hug, taking him quite by surprise, chanting her thanks almost under her breath as his arms came up to pat her back awkwardly before she released him, the flush on her cheeks thankfully hidden by the dark of the night. He straightened up with a harumph, before standing up from the bench.

“If you’d like to discuss plans tomorrow morning, at about 10am… come to my lair. I will leave the back door open at that time so you can get to the basement unobserved, and we can have a more detailed discussion on our plan of action then. Is that amenable to you?”

She gave a nod, standing up herself, and catching his arm before he left.

“Thank you, Spinner. Thank you for having faith in me.”

He gave a hesitant smile back and a nod of acknowledgement before he headed back towards the city hall, leaving her to stand in the dark, alone with her thoughts and the initial points of a plan starting to brew in her head. She spent the rest of the ball slightly distracted, wandering the gardens, possibly lost in thought or maybe perhaps lost in contemplation of plans and plots to come.


	19. The Conspiracy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Plotting, planning, and more allies...

She arrived at the pawn shop the next morning with a slight headache from the wine she had drunk at the masque ball the night before and a churning of trepidation in her gut. Last night had gone so well, with the Spinner agreeing to work with her rather than alone, but now was the time to plot and scheme and set plans into motion.

She knew that they wouldn’t be able to take on the Blue Fairy alone without consequences. The security systems around HQ were pretty much impenetrable if you didn’t have the access codes and permission necessary to get in, and by now Belle’s codes had probably been wiped. It was a mix of systems designed to stop any one set of known powers from being used to enter the vaults by force; they would need to persuade someone still working in HQ to work with them. Since the revelation last night that her notes and computer were now under lock and key, the need to break into HQ had increased exponentially, but thankfully Charming still seemed to be reasonably friendly with her- maybe he would make a good spy, if they could get Snow on their side too.

Robert was standing in the front of the shop as she entered with time slowed to a crawl, standing in his usual majestic suit and tie, every inch the gentleman she had kissed goodbye not an hour earlier at the door to their apartment.

He was sitting on the stairs in the basement a few minutes later, mask and scales and leather pants and leg brace all donned while invisible in a corner while she had studiously looked at one of his inventions. She resumed pacing the room as he started speaking.

“So, what’s the plan?”

“Well, there’s a few different things we need to do. I need to retrieve my computer and notes from inside HQ- I was working on tracking you down, so if they break the security systems on that then our job gets a lot more difficult. Luckily I know our way in.”

“Oh?” He inquired, frowning slightly at the extra task on the list but interested nevertheless.

“I know a route inside HQ that doesn’t require using the main doors. The superfluous routes in have far less monitoring than the front entrance, given they are used by supers on their way to and from work who don’t want to be recognised. This could give us the opportunity to get inside the building without notice. We will still need someone who can input recognised pass codes to get us down to the vaults where my stuff is, but I know a couple of people who might be interested.”

“And who might they be? Remember, they can’t be too close to Blue, just in case they start to spy on our operation and report back to her.” He cautioned her with a finger, and she nodded to show her understanding.

“I know. But you’ve already met them. Remember Snow White and Prince Charming?”

He looked wary, but gave a nod.

“Charming is the one who told me about where my notes and computer were kept. And if it helps, I know who Snow is in real life, though she doesn’t know me. I spotted her in her civvies on a date with Charming once. I don’t know their names, but knowing how to identify them and their date night restaurant on Fridays is plenty to go on.”

He raised an eyebrow. “If you waltz in to interrupt their date night and blackmail them then they would be even more likely to betray you, not less. Before you betrayed Blue, would you have considered them friends or colleagues?”

“Snow would be a colleague- she’s harsh at times, protective, especially of Charming emotionally. But Charming is a sweetie, we get on very well.”

He gave a nod of assent. “Very well. Bring Charming onto the team, then.”

Belle wagged her finger, shaking her head. “They come very much as a couple, Spinner. I doubt I would be able to get one to work with us but not another.”

He gave a shrug. “Well, if they’re that important a part of the plan to breach HQ, then you will simply have to convince both of them to join us, won’t you? Let’s hope Snow’s loyalties lie with her friends rather than her boss.”

She gave a nod. “While we’re breaking into HQ, is there anything you’d like to accomplish while we’re there?”

He rubbed his chin in thought. “Do you know where we can get more of those power blocking cuffs? If we’re to stop Blue long enough to expose her actions and get her out of power, we will need to stop her from flying away or the like. If we can get her alone, that would be perfect, but she doesn’t like to travel the city these days without an escort, unfortunately. While we’re there we also want to look around to see if she’s keeping information on the secret identities of other supers to use for blackmail or assassination- we will need that to show the police and expose her.”

Belle nodded, deep in thought. “The power blocking cuffs are kept in the lower levels of the vault, where my computer and the notes I created when I was trying to find you are currently being kept, so it’s not too far out of our way. The Blue Fairy’s office, on the other hand, is five floors up above ground, nowhere near the top or the bottom, so it’ll be a lot harder to sneak in there to get evidence against her. We’re almost better splitting up, if your son decided to help us out.”

He gave a harrumph. “My son is, against my council, on the team already. We would probably need to separate Snow and Charming, but that leaves us with a team of two and a team of three during the main attack. I suggest I and Snow make up one team- if she betrays us, I can handle her, and if we go to Blue’s office if anything goes awry we can escape through the windows-”

Belle was already shaking her head. “Those windows are heavily reinforced, you would do better smashing your head on the steel walls next to them. I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to split up if we’re a team of five- we need more supers, a greater variety of abilities to protect us in case things go wrong and ensure we get out of this alive. Are you sure we shouldn’t involve my mother?”

He looked at her stonily. “Do you know why your mother quit?”

She gave him a confused look.

“I remember it quite clearly. In my last battle with her, she managed to shatter her ankle and leg bones. The doctors did quite well at restoring it, but if your entire way of fighting depends on being able to walk, to move faster than others, having a leg upon which you cannot support your weight without breaking your concentration and therefore your focus on your abilities is a deal breaker. She spent a while at a desk job in superhero HQ, but that wasn’t the life she had signed up to. She retired shortly afterwards.”

“How do you know?” She asked, crossing her arms, looking at him curiously. She had heard the story before, of her mother stopping fighting after a broken leg and quitting shortly after, but not from this perspective.

“I broke into HQ shortly before she quit. She was working there, late in the evening. She begged me not to hurt her, because she had a daughter who she wanted to go home to at the end of the day. A husband she loved, a daughter who would be left without a mother, a family, complete if I left her alone, forever devastated if I left no trace of my entry and left her to die when the explosives I had set through the building went off.”

“You spared her life.” She said, a tone of wonder in her voice as she came to sit on the stairs beside him.

He nodded. “I could have continued and found the information I needed to bring the Blue Fairy down once and for all, but my entry had damaged her leg again. I helped her get out of the building before it exploded, delivered her into the waiting arms of the police, and left. She didn’t tell anyone who rescued her from the old superhero HQ, but retired the very next day.

“I didn’t know why I saved her at the time, but I’ve looked back on that moment several times over the years. I think I saw the family I had always wanted about to be destroyed by my actions, another Baelfire left motherless, another broken heart never to be healed, and that was what stayed my hand. I guess I will never know.” He shrugged.

She patted his shoulder comfortingly, and he flinched slightly at the contact. “Well, for whatever reason, you’re the reason my mother’s still here. You’re the reason she was around to teach me what she knew and the reason I was inspired by her to become a superhero.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Some hero, huh? Working with a known supervillain who has killed countless people, blew the old superhero HQ sky high, stole, lied, cheated-”

“That’s all in the past, Spinner! You’re more heroic than some so called heroes, that’s for sure!”

“Well, the police aren’t going to use that argument if I ever stop by the police station, are they now?” He said, sarcastic mocking in his voice being replaced with a resigned sadness. “I’ve just been trying to close this chapter of my life so Bae and I can move on. That’s all. And instead I am chased and hunted simply for wanting to bring a terrible person to justice. But I deserve it for the things I’ve done. Baelfire doesn’t.”

“Baelfire doesn’t deserve to have been treated the way he was, but neither do you. Just because someone has done bad things doesn’t mean they’re doomed to running and hiding forever. You need to learn to forgive yourself.” Belle said in a reassuring voice.

“But what if I can’t?” He said. His voice was so small she wished she could have hugged him there and then.

“I’ll forgive you for you, then.” She said, and he gave a small smile after a moment’s hesitation.

She returned to pacing around the room rather than sitting next to him on the stairs. “We’d better work out who else we want to recruit to our team if we’re not recruiting my mother, then.” She said breezily, as if they hadn’t just ventured into such emotional territory.

He rubbed his chin in thought. “I could try recruiting among the villains. The Queens of Darkness might be interested, along with the Evil Queen, but she likes to work alone most of the time. I could try contacting the Evil Queen today, see if she’s interested in joining us. She and Blue have been at odds for some time.”

“Okay, as long as we don’t leave her alone with Snow.” Belle said. “Those two have history.”

He gave a nod. “Contrary to popular belief I do keep up with the news of who is fighting who, thank you very much. As long as we don’t inform either party too early on in proceedings we should be able to recruit both. Would you be able to contact Snow and Charming today?”

She gave a nod. “Is the front door still open? I’ll head off, try and catch them as they’re leaving HQ.”

He gave a nod in reply, and they exchanged their super identity contact numbers before she slowed time to a stop and strolled out of the Spinner’s lair.

 

***

 

Tracking down Snow and Charming was almost too easy. They were HQ’s best fighters apart from Blue and Belle at the moment, so it was inevitable that they would be out on the streets fighting crime. She waited until they had finished discussing the bank raid they had just stopped with police before tapping Charming and Snow on the arms and running away at double the speed of a human towards a nearby alleyway. The police let the supers give chase; they weren’t the ones with sufficient skill to stop Thorn after all.

She came to a halt in an alley several blocks away, Charming running and Snow flying after her, both donning confused expressions when she turned and came to a stop in front of them.

Charming was the first to speak. “I take it you wanted to get our attention for a reason more important than a social chat?”

“Was I that obvious?”

“Even the police could see you running away. You wanted to get our attention.” Snow replied. “Now make this quick- Blue’s going to get suspicious if we spend too long ‘fighting’ with you.”

“I and my associate-” she was cut off by a snort from Charming, who was shut up by a icy look from Snow- “I and my associate the Spinner have come across information that Blue is trying to learn the secret identities of supers in order to give said information to assassins, so she may have them murdered in their sleep. The proof of this lies in HQ, but I suspect my pass codes have been disabled, so I need you two to help us get in to find such evidence, as well as destroying my notes on the Spinner’s movements and getting some power blocking cuffs so we can stop the Blue Fairy once and for all.”

“And you’re telling us all your plan because…” Charming said, suspicion in his voice.

“I want you to trust me on this, guys. We are heroes. We operate on honesty on all but our true identities. Blue is breaking the code all supers abide by, the code to keep our true identities, never mind our families and friends, safe from those who would want to hurt us. The Spinner has proven to me that he can be trusted not to break the code, therefore he is our ally in this fight to stop the Blue Fairy from endangering and controlling us all.”

Snow and Charming looked at each other, a silent conversation racing between them. Eventually Snow looked to Belle again.

“I don’t know what game the Spinner is playing… and I have no idea why you’ve suddenly decided to trust him. He hasn’t coerced you or anything?”

“I know who he really is, Snow. That gives me reason to trust him more than anything.”

Snow and Charming looked surprised at this revelation she shared so willingly, and Charming asked, “How?”

“Snow, remember the fight with you, me, Blue and the Spinner? After you were knocked out, the Spinner was knocked out and Blue removed his mask. She intended to photograph his face and use it to discern his true identity. I recognised him, and managed to remove him from the scene before Blue could succeed. For my actions, she kidnapped me, and my escape was aided by a man who is The Spinner’s son, who was the one who ‘died’ when the Dark One did. Blue held him captive for a good ten years until I rescued him. We need to stop her before she does something similar to someone else ever again.”

Snow and Charming’s expressions got slowly more pale and more disturbed as she told her story. A few moments of silence and another conversation of looks followed the end of her story before Charming turned to her again.

“I… You wouldn’t tell us a story as disturbing as that if it weren’t true. You were one of Blue’s strongest allies, once.” He gave a nod. “We will help you. I just hope we can remain out of Blue’s wrath until we’re out of her clutches.”

Belle nodded. “We’d better end this ‘fight’ then.” She said. “I can’t allow you to capture me, so just tell her I ran at speed after you told me you wouldn’t defect away from Blue, I guess.”

Snow nodded in response, and threw her arms around Belle in a hug before she could turn to leave.

“Take care, Thorn.” She said. “If the Blue Fairy gets her hands on you or the Spinner, it won’t look pretty.”

Belle nodded, and gave Charming a quick hug too before speeding away at near light speeds, leaving Snow and Charming to stand alone in the deserted alleyway.


	20. The Half-Discovered Secret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Uh-oh...

It had been a long day, and Belle was weary as she slowly walked down the street towards her apartment, librarian clothes on and plain black mask in bag. Convincing Snow and Charming to think and look around HQ for themselves had been a vital step in getting her plans with Robert- with the Spinner in motion. (she was trying to keep the two separate in her mind, as advised by textbooks she had read on combatting mind readers, just in case. She still kept slipping up- there was so much of each half of the man she loved intertwined in both identities that it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began.)

The lights were on as she let herself into the penthouse, and she came in to find Robert sitting on one of the couches, clearly exhausted. This wasn’t surprising- in their plans for the day he had mentioned that he was going to try to contact the daughter of the Queen of Hearts, and evidently didn’t expect to come away from that encounter unscathed.

She plopped down on the sofa next to him, bag dumped down between them, succumbing to the same level of exhaustion. He let out a groan as the jostling of the sofa as she sat down disturbed his position, but begrudgingly moved to let her lean a head on his shoulder.

“Hey…” He said quietly after a few minutes, his voice betraying his exhaustion. “Good day at the library?”

“Pretty good.” She replied. “How was your day?”

His first reply was another groan of exhaustion. “Not good. I had a client from hell and now my head feels like I just drank a pan-galactic gargle blaster. You don’t happen to have any painkillers, do you? I checked the cupboard, but we’re all out.”

She flopped off his arm and onto the opposite arm of the sofa, nudging her purse towards him, closing her eyes as she rested her head. “There’s some ibuprofen in there. Be my guest.”

He gave a gentle noise of appreciation, but took a few minutes before he reached for her purse, ruttling through it. She listened quietly to his movements, feeling like she could fall asleep until the ruttling stopped, and his hesitant voice filled the air again, asking her name.

Belle slowly opened her eyes, turning to look at Robert, who was now holding up her emergency standard-issue mask, a confused and inquiring look in his eyes.

Her eyes widened in horror, face frozen in terror.

“Erm…” she tried to say something, but nothing came out other than a confused mumble. Robert’s expression faded from confusion to amusement.

“I take it you weren’t expecting me to find this just yet?” He said, his voice on the edge of laughter at her awkward attempts to try and find words to explain. Eventually she managed to get around her mumbling to form a coherent sentence.

“I… I wasn’t quite sure how to bring it up, to be honest… there was never a good time…”

“Oh, Belle!” He dropped the mask and her purse to the floor, arms folding around her and drawing her close. He started to speak, his chest vibrating against her ear.

“I remember having a very similar conversation with my son, some years back, before he died. Do you know what I said to him when I found a mask in the pocket of one of his pairs of jeans in the laundry? I said, and I will say again to you; ‘My precious one, no matter what power or abilties you get or don’t get, no matter what great acts you commit or condone, no matter how many people you save or how many lies you tell or how many secrets you hide from the world or from me or from both, know that I will always love you, no matter what.’” The gentle scottish voice was soothing, but the words spoken soon had her heart swelling with love and tears welling up in her eyes.

“And I love you too.” She choked out, arms coming up around his back to hold him close. “It’s tearing me apart, Robert. All this keeping secrets is tearing me apart…” and her words were lost once again, disappearing in a rain of tears soaking the shoulder of his shirt. The clung together at a strange angle on the sofa, but neither of them wanted to let go long enough to move. She felt a few tears of his own on the shoulder of her cardigan, and pretended to ignore the occasional sob she heard muffled by her hair.

After a few moments, she pulled back, looking at him with her tear filled eyes red from crying.

“I wish I could tell you everything, Robert. I really wish I could. But I’m not in a good place at the moment to be able to tell you who I am safely, without putting you in danger yourself.”

He shook his head in protest. “I’m sure I’d be able to handle whoever, whatever’s after you, sweetheart.”

“Well, I’m not.” She said, standing up. “I will tell you, someday. But not today.”

“Belle, please… you can trust me. I won’t tell anyone.” He pleaded, standing up after her as she made her way around the sofa.

She shook her head, spraying tears from her cheeks. “I can’t. I know I can trust you, Robert, but would you trust me once you know who I am?”

“Belle… I will still love you. That will never change, no matter who you are.”

“Well, I can’t take that chance, not yet. I’m sorry.” And she fled the room with her purse and mask before he could speak again, closing and locking her bedroom door between them at mortal speeds so as to keep her secret, before collapsing on the floor and bursting into tears again.

Her words to Robert had been quite true- all this secret keeping was tearing her apart.


	21. The Untold Secret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More plotting and dodging questions...

After crying herself to sleep the night before, Belle was somewhat apprehensive about going to meet the Spinner that day to do more to organise breaking into HQ, a task she wasn’t looking forward to. She didn’t leave her room until she heard the door to the apartment open and close, signalling Robert leaving for work.

He had stayed outside her door for a good hour after she fled in there, pleading with her to come out and talk to him, sobs between his begging that she didn’t need to suffer this alone. After a while, as her crying on the other side of the door quietened, he went quiet too, eventually picking himself up and heading to bed, the soft tap of his cane on the floor her indication that he had left, and it wasn’t until then that she went to cry in bed rather than on the floor by the door.

As she cautiously opened her bedroom door that morning, Belle found the apartment as she would expect to find it every morning, but with little things here and there almost like an apology for his accidental discovery of part of her secret. The flowers on the table this morning were a bouquet of forget me nots and daisies, with a single red rose lying on the table on top of a note;

 

_Belle,_

_I am so sorry for what I found yesterday and the pain it must have caused you. I in no way intended to make you feel unsafe and will keep your secret to the grave._

_I understand your reasons for keeping the rest of your super identity secret. I have known other supers in my time, and they protected their identities with a vengence for much the same reason you are doing so. I am touched that you think me so worthy of protection, my love, but remember that I will always be here for you when you need me, and I promise to listen when you feel ready to tell me who you are with no judgement or malice. Whatever you have done, I assure you that you are still forgiven and still loved, and always will be._

_I have left you some pain au chocolat in the oven ready to heat up for your breakfast when you’re ready. Take your time, and be kind to yourself, my love. The world will allow you one morning off, surely._

_I will always be yours,_

_Robert_

 

She smiled at the note despite her gloomy mood that morning, and went to heat up the pain au chocolat. Belle took the morning off, as suggested; she was due to meet the Spinner in his lair at some point that morning, but luckily hadn’t specified when.

It was eleven o’clock when her super phone buzzed in her pocket, a text from the Spinner appearing and asking where she was. Within moments, she went to the library, changed into her supersuit, and arrived at the pawn shop basement, letting time flow again once she located the Spinner sitting by his desk, working on wiring together some gizmo she couldn’t immediately identify a purpose for, his phone resting on the desk beside him.

“You called?” She asked, causing him to flinch at the suddenness of her appearance. He glared at her when his flinch led to a yelp as a drop of hot solder from his wiring hit his hand rather than the wire it was intended for.

“Don’t do that! This is a delicate piece of equipment I’m trying to build here, you know!” He angrily spat at her, hurriedly stumbling across to the sink in the corner to nurse his hand under.

“I thought you wanted to know where I was? You know what I can do, Spinner. Whyever wouldn’t I arrive at my speed, huh?”

He glared at her again. “I thought we were supposed to meet up earlier this morning, Thorn. We’re on a tight time schedule, you know, we don’t have time to be faffing about. Where were you?”

She leaned against the desk nonchalantly as he returned to his work. “Oh, well, my boyfriend made me breakfast this morning, in deference to my slightly rubbish evening yesterday. I simply had to stick around and eat it; besides, I thought I was somewhat freelance now. I’m allowed a morning off once in a while, am I not?”

He huffed, shooting her one last glare before returning to his soldering.

“So… how did the meeting with the Evil Queen go yesterday?” She asked as she watched him work.

“Not very well. She won’t touch the Blue Fairy with a bargepole is the summary I eventually got, but not after three hours of negotiating. She still wants me to help her bring down Snow and Charming, but I really don’t fancy it. Speaking of which, are they going to help us out?”

Belle nodded. “It took a little persuasion, but yes, they will help.” She said. “Do you know of any other supers we could inquire about? We need more people if our break in is going to succeed.”

He made a thoughtful noise. “I used to have the details for how to contact several different supervillains, but that was a good ten years ago- many of my old go-to partners will have retired or moved on now. However, there is someone I could ask. I think Jefferson still knows how to get hold of quite a few different supers, even though he’s ‘retired’ as a mask maker.”

Belle nodded. “Shall we visit him this afternoon, then? As you say, time is of the essence.”

He made an affirmative noise. “Jefferson’s number is on my phone. Send him a text to let him know we’re on our way while I finish my soldering, and then we can go. He likes his advance warning.”

 

***

 

They walked to Jefferson’s at mortal speeds, the Spinner keeping them out of visibility in much the same way his son had a few weeks prior. The walk was silent, and somewhat full of some silent tension; he probably still hadn’t forgiven her for taking the morning off, even though (ironically) it had been his suggestion. She was still feeling somewhat jumpy, and despite not being very religious, prayed to god that Jefferson wouldn’t say anything incriminating while they were visiting. It was bad enough that she had let slip to Robert that she was a super the evening before; she dreaded to think what might happen should he discover the full extent of who she was, given that she had known his full identity for a good month or so by now.

Jefferson was at the door opening it the moment they arrived, the Spinner climbing the steps to the porch with a weary step (she wondered how much the brace helped and how much he used his telepathy to take the weight off his injured limb while walking) and Belle bounding up the steps with a nervous energy. She felt like she could bounce off the walls as they walked inside, time feeling sluggish as they followed Jefferson through to the living room, still a mess as it was the last time she had visited him.

“Do take a seat. Would either of you like some tea? I remembered to get some Earl Grey just for you, Spinner!” Jefferson’s voice was bright and chirpy despite the gloomy mess of his living room.

“Tea would be great, thank you.” The Spinner said, unceremoniously making a beeline for the most padded armchair, clearing it of pizza boxes with practiced ease, and collapsing into it with a sigh of relief, floating a footstool from a corner of the room to rest beneath his injured ankle.

Belle looked at the other sofa and gingerly sat down on the corner of it least covered in food stains and takeaway boxes. She gave Jefferson a nod at his inquiring look, and he bustled through to the kitchen to make them both tea.

“Do you visit Jefferson regularly?” Belle inquired as her eyes alighted on the footstool her companion was using.

“We’ve been good friends for a number of years. I knew him back when I was the Dark One; he created my costumes back then as well, but those ones were considerably less flamboyant than his usual style.”

“I remember seeing those.” Belle said, her mind drifting back to pictures in newspapers and from TV screens in her childhood- his costume had been all black back then, swirls of dark fabric and a full face mask that inspired a certain degree of fear in Belle’s childlike mind at the time. It was definitely not Jefferson’s style of costume. “You must have been good friends for him to create that for you.”

The Spinner nodded. “He was one of the first people in the super community I met when I moved here. He’s a strange friend, but you get used to him over time. We kept in touch while I was ‘retired’ after my son died, especially after what happened to his wife and daughter.”

Belle nodded, thoughts suddenly melancholy. Jefferson’s wife and daughter were victims of his accidentally breaking the identity code about five years previously- the wife had gone missing, the daughter had gone into witness protection soon after so that she would not meet a unknown fate also. Either way, the mask maker had been deprived of the two people he loved the most in quick succession, a fate wished on no-one.

Maybe that was why she feared telling the Spinner- telling Robert- who she was so much. Jefferson had been broken by the loss of those he loved; she didn’t want to lose the man of her dreams so soon after she had found him because of who she was.

Her melancholy thoughts were interrupted by Jefferson entering the room again, a tray with three steaming cups of tea in his hands. He settled down on the sofa Belle was perched on, and the three of them soon all had warm mugs in hand.

“So… how is the plotting to take down the leader of the superhero community treating the both of you?” Jefferson asked, after giving them a few moments to appreciate their tea quietly.

“We’ve managed to get Snow and Charming from HQ over to our side.” Belle said, as the Spinner took a gulp of tea. “We need some more firepower for our plans, however. Could you recommend anyone?”

Jefferson raised an eyebrow. “That would depend on what sort of plot you two lovebirds have hatched. What are you trying to do?”

“We’re trying to break into the superhero HQ.” The Spinner replied just as Jefferson was gulping some tea, causing him to spit it out in a spray across the carpet.

“You’re _what_?!” He said, before coughing and clearing his throat. “Are you crazy?”

“They’ve got my computer and my notes on the Spinner, Jefferson.” Belle replied. “We need to destroy them if he’s ever going to get any peace after we’ve taken down Blue.”

“Okay, maybe not completely crazy yet, then.” He said. “So, I take it you already have the means of getting into the building?”

The Spinner nodded before she could reply. “That’s why we’ve got Snow and Charming on the team. However, we’re going to need some more firepower with us in case something goes wrong, or maybe some extra means of escape from the building.”

Jefferson put his teacup down to rub his chin in thought. “Hmm… I would suggest either the Queens of Darkness, or getting some of the other superheroes in on the plan. Otherwise, the Genie might be a good bet- are the two of you still on good terms?” He asked the Spinner.

He shook his head. “Not after I socked him in the head with a mirror.”

Jefferson gave a chuckle. “Oh yes, I remember now! That was only a couple of months ago, I should have known!”

“Do you have any other suggestions as to people in the super community who might want to help?” Belle asked.

“Well, I’m not in contact with a lot of supers at the moment. I would suggest trying to get Captain Hook on the team, but the Spinner here had a rather nasty falling out with him about ten years ago.”

“How about Robin Hood?” Belle asked. “I know he’s neutral, mostly. Maybe he’d consider helping us?”

Jefferson nodded. “That’s a good idea. I’ve got his number, here-” He scribbled on the back of a takeaway receipt and handed her the number. “Give him a call, see how it goes. You’re a smart one, I can see why Mr Grumpy-pants here likes you.”

The Spinner shot Jefferson a sharp look, and they continued to drink their tea in silence for a while after that.

Once the tea was finished, they made to leave, but Jefferson caught her elbow before she could follow the Spinner out the front door.

“Could I talk to you a sec?” He whispered.

She nodded, and when the Spinner looked back to check why she wasn’t following, he shooed him out the room, before turning back to Belle.

“Now, have you told him who you are yet?” Jefferson asked.

She glared at him. “No. And you know my reasons, Jefferson. Stop trying to get him to guess, for god’s sake!”

Jefferson looked affronted, but she continued on. “Oh, don’t give me that look. I could see what you were trying to do. Like it or not, the Spinner and I are not going to suddenly miraculously like each other, no matter your meddling! Who do you think you are, Albus Dumbledore or something?” Her voice remained at a whisper, but a harsh edge had joined it by the time she finished speaking.

“I’m just trying to soften the blow for one of my oldest friends when he does find out, Thorn.” Jefferson said in a similar harsh whisper. “I’d hate for this to drive you apart; he’s the happiest he’s ever been these last few months, and that’s not counting getting his son back. Don’t break his heart, or I’m going to come after you, powers or no powers. Understood?”

“But what about my heart, Jeff?” She whispered, sadness touching her voice. “What if that’s what gets shattered on the floor?”

“Well, then I’ll berate him for throwing away the one person who gave a monkeys about him other than me or Bae these last ten years, eh?” He replied, and after a moment quietly ushered her out the door after the Spinner.

 

***

 

“Jefferson’s never normally like that.” He said quietly as they walked invisibly back towards his shop.

“Like what?” She asked.

“Secretive around me. He asked me to leave the room so he could talk to you on your own, for god’s sake! What does he know about you that I don’t?”

“He knows who I am.” She said, quietly.

He stopped in his tracks as if a bus had hit him, before turning towards her slowly.

“He _what_? Did I hear correctly? You’re willing to tell _him_ who you really are, but not me?!” There was anger and maybe a hint of jealousy in his harsh whisper.

“He doesn’t know everything, but he guessed who I was rather than me telling him. His knowledge is more a matter of circumstance rather than deliberate giving of knowledge. That happens sometimes; I thought you of all people would understand that.”

“So after everything, after knowing who I am, after bringing my son back to me, after risking your mother’s life to get me to trust you, you still don’t trust me?” He sounded a bit broken now; his shoulders slumped. “I guess not. It’s not as if there’s any reason for you to trust me.”

“It’s not because of who you are to the world, Spinner.” She said, this whisper with a weary edge to it. “Believe me, if I were in your place I wouldn’t trust me with that information either. But you’ll hate me if I tell you. Trust me on that.”

“Wait… no. I wouldn’t hate you!” He protested as she started down the road, hurrying to catch up with her. “Please… you’re one of the only people with superpowers who I know who doesn’t want to kill me at the moment!”

She stopped, and turned back to face him.

“Look… can we drop this until _after_ we’ve defeated Blue?” She said in a resigned voice.

He gave a huff, but after a glare, relented. “Fine. But you’re not to run off after we’ve defeated her until we’ve sat down and talked over this properly, okay?” He said. “I’d hate to lose a friend, after all.”

She gave a small, sad chuckle as he smiled at her, and they continued walking back to the pawn shop, her fighting the entire way to stop herself breaking down into tears again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter, I promise!
> 
> ... well, within the next two, at least.


	22. The Truth, Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the truth will out...

It was late in another day calling people and arranging meetings, but just before they were going to head their separate ways from the basement of Gold’s shop, a text message flashed up on Belle’s phone:

_We want to join the alliance against Blue. Meet us at the train station on platform 11 in a quarter of an hour._

_-The Queens of Darkness_

She read out the message to Robert, who shrugged and put his mask on again, adjusting the brace around his leg before standing and heading to the passageway out the building. She had worked with him for a good week before he showed her the alternative route out of the basement; a passage leading to an alleyway nearby, impossible to traverse in the opposite direction but useful for getting out in a hurry. She followed him up there, and paused in the alleyway.

“I’ll see you there, I guess?” She ventured.

“Your skills will be needed. Our powers are best conserved, so we should each go on our own powers. I will meet you there in roughly ten minutes.” And with that, he rose into the air, shimmering out of view.

She gave a sigh- the man loved to get the last word, and it was infuriating, but she couldn’t be mad at him for long- and slowed time down, setting off down the still streets at a gentle jog.

The train station wasn’t too far, a twenty minute walk if you were a normal human being, but she arrived within seconds relative to when she had received the text. It was just after rush hour, and the platform was mostly quiet as she looked around quickly before letting time go again.

The women she was meant to be meeting had been adversaries of hers before, a few months back when she was still working with Blue, and all three had strange and limited powers. Cruella could command animals to do her will; Ursula could manipulate salt water; Maleficent could breathe fire and fly. Alone, they were easily circumvented; together, they were a nuisance to the heroes of the city.

They arrived ten minutes after she did, just as she was checking her watch. The sound of Cruella’s mocking voice caused her head to snap up, eyes widening to see the fireball in Maleficent’s hand and the dalmatian at Cruella’s side.

“Well, well, well… Look who we have here. One little superhero, all on her own… You didn’t bring your pet Spinner with you today?”

“I think our working relationship is nothing of the sort, Cruella. You should know better, owning so many of them.” She nonchalantly replied, casually straightening from her position leaning against one of the pillars.

“We’re still interested to know which of you is in charge and what your agenda is before we decide to work with you or not.” Ursula interjected, a threatening look in her eyes behind her mask.

Belle chuckled. “I think you’ll find I’m not going to make you privy to the details of our jointly created plan unless I have reassurances that you’re going to stick with us the entire way. I would hate to lose your support at a vital moment, and the three of you have never been the most reliable in the past, from what I know of your interactions with supers outside your little threesome.”

They started forward at her mocking tone of voice, but were stopped by a disembodied voice from somewhere above their heads.

“She’s right, dearies.” He materialised out of the air, all glittering scales and sharp scaled coat and leather pants, and floated over to touch down standing at Belle’s side. “Now, why are the three of you here? You lot were never so altruistic as to help out supers other than yourselves.”

“We have been known to make exceptions when sufficiently motivated. You of all people should know that, _Dark One_ , having worked with us in the past.”

He scoffed. “Worked with? Hardly. The three of you decided that the moment I had my hands on the jewels we were stealing that it was high time to take them off me and do a runner. It’s not my fault I decided to defend myself and keep said plunder for myself after that little debacle. I did all the work on that burglary; you lot didn’t lift a finger.” He crossed his arms as he looked between the three of them. “Now, why are the three of you here? What do you want to talk to us about?”

“It’s not so much a matter of what _they_ want to talk to you about; more about what I want to talk with you two about.” The high familiar voice came from behind them, laced with steely anger, and both Belle and the Spinner turned as one, eyes finding the familiar mask and costume of the Blue Fairy, standing on the platform a few feet away from them, face drawn into a scowl.

“I thought you were still holed up in that fortress you call your superhero HQ.” The Spinner’s voice dripped with acid. “I take it getting the Queens of Darkness to do your dirty work isn’t enough anymore?”

“These ladies have performed brilliantly at the task of getting you two pesky individuals out into the open, a task I’ve been trying to achieve for the last _month_ without success, and shall be rewarded accordingly, especially once we’ve brought the both of you down.” The Blue Fairy’s smile was cruel and mocking.

“Blue, you don’t need to do this.” Belle pleaded, holding a hand out in a placating gesture. “The code is in place for a reason, so that supers can live their lives in peace. Why are you trying to break it? The Spinner, the Queens of Darkness, they deserve to be able to exist free of the threat of being killed in their sleep!”

Blue laughed, a cruel, mocking laugh. “Are you naive, girl? If we allow the supervillains of this city to get away, to sleep safely at night and live amongst us without consequence, we put the people of this city in untold and unimaginable danger! Any super who isn’t working for the good of the city must be stopped at all costs!”

“Any super who isn’t working with _you_ , you mean.” The Spinner commented dryly.

“Like it or not, but I have the good of the people as the main motivator for my actions, unlike the two of you. I am fully justified.”

“The supers living in this city other than those who you like deserve protection too, Blue!” Belle exclaimed angrily. “No matter what they’ve done, no matter who they are. You would condone the murder of supers, the exposure of their identities, which puts their families in danger as well as themselves!”

“Maybe they shouldn’t be living around such dangerous supers, then.” Blue said. “Every war has its casualties.”

“Do you think people get to choose who they love, or who they wish to spend their lives with? Do you think supers no longer have the right to fall in love and live normal lives? Because that’s what you’re criminalising, Blue. I wear this mask to protect the people I love, and any decent super would never try to take that away from me!” Belle’s voice had risen to a shout, the emotion thrumming through her veins letting traces of her true accent slip through, and now out of the corner of her eye she could see the Spinner eyeing her curiously, but her attention was diverted by Blue floating up a few feet and towards her.

“Enough. I can see you are far too corrupted by the Spinner to listen to reason any more.” Blue shook her head. “I had such high hopes for you, Thorn. But, in the end, it seems you are too much like your mother. She would never listen to reason either.”

Belle’s eyes widened, and she had to be restrained by the Spinner’s hand on her arm from trying to tackle Blue while she was still within leaping distance from the ground. “What do you mean?! What happened with my mother?! Tell me!!”

The Blue Fairy laughed, a maniacal cackle. “She disagreed with my methods too. I nearly managed to arrange for her to conveniently be on the night shift at the old HQ when intelligence told us that the Spinner would be trying to break in, which would have been a fitting end to her questioning and investigating had she not been mysteriously rescued. Thankfully she retired shortly afterwards, and I thought that little problem was dealt with until you showed up and started going on about ‘fighting the good fight’ and ‘doing the brave thing’ when that’s no way to run an effective policing force now, is it? So, I’m afraid you’re going to have to meet a similar fate to your dear old mother, but I’m going to find out who you are first- trace the weed back to the root, as it were.”

As her speech ended, Blue made a gesture, and Belle realised a second too late that they had completely forgotten about the Queens of darkness standing behind them. The Spinner’s hand was jerked from her arm as he was knocked over from behind by one of Cruella’s dalmatians, and she didn’t have time to focus and slow down time as a fireball slammed into her back, sending her sprawling across the concrete train platform. She landed heavily, pain searing across her back as the fire ate its way through her green and brown costume, the cotton heating and melting and burning. She hardly had the time to draw breath to scream at the pain shooting through her back and the grazes across her hands as she was unceremoniously ceased by the shoulders and lifted off the ground by a tight grip under her armpit.

She turned her head to see the Blue fairy was the one with the vicelike grip under her arm; she was now dangling a good few feet above the ground, a precarious position for someone with her powers, given speeding or slowing time down would not stop the force of gravity from smashing her bones if she landed wrong. Belle didn’t have the time to ponder the specifics of this, as Blue’s other hand came up, reaching for the edges of her mask.

The movement of her shoulders as Belle reached her hands up to stop her sent waves of pain flowing through her as the burning skin on her back stretched; she was dimly aware of the Spinner getting up and throwing Cruella’s dalmatian into the path of a train speeding past with a wave of telekinetic force, but her focus narrowed to the movement of her hands, raising one to stop Blue’s hand taking one path, and then the other when her arm tired.

Another fireball narrowly missing Blue and catching Belle’s arms stopped that game a few seconds later, her eyes widening and a gasping scream with no sound coming out of her mouth as the pain raced up her hands to her brain. Blue encountered no resistance this time as she ripped Belle’s mask from her face, tossing it to the ground nearby just as the Spinner looked up at Belle’s scream.

His eyes widened, expression flitting from surprise to horror to anger in a matter of moments. She saw his eyes dart to where Blue’s hand was reaching to her pocket, probably to get out a phone or camera, and his expression darkened further.

It was like a shockwave of force. A wave of telekinetic energy thrummed out of his hands, sending Maleficent and Cruella and Ursula and Blue flying backwards, Blue’s phone ripped from her pocket and her bruising grip ripped from under Belle’s armpit. Without the force supporting her, Belle quickly tumbled to the ground, nearly thumping her head on the concrete if it weren’t for the invisible force cushioning her descent.

Her eyes snapped back to his the moment she was safely on the ground, his emotions a riotous mess of confusion across his face as he saw, truly _saw_ , who she was, and she immediately did what she should have the moment she had known they were under attack. Time slowed to a stop around her, the pain from the fire licking across her back and her hands fading as the fire raged slower and came to an almost stop. It wouldn’t stop properly until she could go jump in a pond or something, but she had slowed down the reaction to a crawl, allowing her to get up and move about.

Or it would have, if her control over the halting of time hadn’t chosen then to flicker and go. The flames on her back and hands roared up again, and she doubled over in pain at the sensation catching her off guard.

After a moment, she felt a sudden rush of cool water over the wounds, the flame extinguished by what must have been the water reserves Ursula had had in her possession. She looked up to see the Spinner concentrating to make sure all the flames were out before he released his telekinetic hold on the water, the liquid splashing as gravity took hold of it again, running through the cracks in the concrete. He walked over to haul her to her feet, a certain urgency to his movements.

“That blow should have knocked out Blue for a little while, but we can’t stay here. Are you okay to walk?” He asked in almost a whisper, his eyes refusing to meet hers but tracing over the burns on her hands, the edges of her gloves now black and charred. His hand was on her elbow steadying her when she looked at the burns and promptly felt faint.

She gave a small, jerky nod. “Do you know someone who could heal this?”

She received a nod for a trouble, and saw the shimmer in the air around them rendering them invisible before he started to steer her towards the exit.

“Wait! My mask!” She said, twisting to see where it lay on the platform and sending another wave of pain from her back to radiate through her body. He stopped her from going to get it herself with a gesture, and with another floated the mask off the floor over towards them, placing it with an almost tender gentleness back on her face.

Belle’s eyes traced back to his face; his expression was still unreadable.

“I know who we can go to to get you healed up; once we’ve done that, we’re going to go home and _talk_ about this. Promise you won’t run?” He asked, a certain uncertainty of the mild-mannered man she knew echoed in his eyes, in the tightness of his posture and the quirk of his mouth. She nodded, and they started to silently, invisibly walk out of the train station, her leaning on his shoulder and hoping the ensuing conversation didn’t end up with her losing the man she loved.


	23. The Truth, Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fallout of Robert's discovery...

The walk to what she would later learn was Dr Whale’s office was slow. She spent a lot of the walk leaning on him; she doubted she would have stayed upright for the whole of what would have been a ten minute walk if he hadn’t occasionally used telekinesis to ensure she stayed upright, the air pressing gently against her shoulders to stop her pitching too far forward or backward. Belle was pale and shaking by the time they got to the ground floor flat, the burns stretching across her back and hands, the grazes on her palms and her knees giving her so much pain she felt like fainting.

Robert seemed to be coping a bit better, but not much. Whenever they occasionally stopped on their walk he would rub the leg with the brace on, and she could see tears and scratches in his uniform from where the dalmatian had scratched and bit him; Jefferson was going to have their heads for this, but there was little they could do about that now.

They entered a small gloomy examination room after being let in by a slightly creepy looking man with a very intense gaze; Robert introduced him as Dr Whale, a super with the ability to heal and with somewhat unscrupulous morals. They seemed to know each other quite well, Whale inquiring after Robert’s health other than the obvious wounds as he made notes on their injuries.

The healing was crude, but effective. It was quite disconcerting to have Whale’s hands tracing over the wound on her back and the wounds on her hands, but the skin grew less angry and the pain ebbed and faded away gradually, leaving her hands at their usual pale pink colour (though her nail varnish, once a light blue, was now a charred black coating on her nails). He healed the worst of Robert’s cuts and scrapes similarly, and Robert promised him a month free of rent before Whale ushered them out of the building. She turned to him once they had left Whale’s office.

“Do you feel well enough to use your powers now? Could you get us back to our apartment?” Robert asked.

“I think so…” Belle replied. “Are you sure there’s the best place?”

“It’s the safest, and there’s no surveillance. Besides, I think we need neutral ground for this conversation.”

She nodded. The process of picking him up was somewhat awkward, given she didn’t know whether to pick him up the way she did last time or go for something less intimate, but eventually they ended up with him being carried in her arms again as she slowed time to a crawl and walked back to the apartment they shared. The stairs, which she had hardly ever used to get to the penthouse, were a challenge and she nearly dropped him on the sofa when she finally got into their apartment, doubling back to lock the door and close the curtains before she let time flow again.

He sat up on the sofa slowly, watching her as she went to sit across on the other one. The illusion melted away from his face and he put his mask down on the table, his now brown eyes watching her as she sat and put her mask on the table too.

“So…” He said, a certain amount of emotion in his voice, as if he was trying to stop himself from breaking down now he was in a safe space.

“I… I didn’t set out wanting to not tell you.” She said, her voice stuttering and breaking as she started to speak before he could ask questions, before he could say something to tear her heart in half. “I had no idea who you were until Blue took your mask off that day, and I couldn’t leave you to her after that. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you who I was sooner, but… I… I was scared. I… I didn’t want you to hate me, you were so angry after I found out who you were that I couldn’t bear to tell you. I… I…” Her attempts at further words between the tears were stopped by a comforting hand on her arm. She looked up. He had moved to sit beside her while she was talking, and now wore an expression of such tenderness her words vanished like smoke.

“Belle…” he said quietly, pausing a second as if to gather his thoughts as his eyes locked with hers. “I understand. Totally. My behaviour after you learned who I was was unquestionably wrong, and I’m sorry. If anything, I lashed out because I thought you would be in danger if you brought news of my identity back to Blue, which I know now that you never would.” His hand moved up and down her arm in a soothing motion. “I’m sorry for accidentally finding your spare mask the other day, and for pressuring you to reveal your identity, or for anything I’ve said to make you feel unsafe around me.”

She shook her head at that. “I’ve never felt unsafe around you, Robert. I just didn’t want you to hate me, that’s all.”

He moved a hand up to cup her cheek. “Belle… Thorn… I could never hate you. If anything, I hate that we live in a world where it’s not safe for us to show the world who we truly are, what we can do, so we don’t have to lie to the people we love to keep them safe in some strange sense of defending them.”

She smiled at his words, leaned into the hand on her cheek. A tear tracked its way down her cheek, and he wiped it away with a thumb.

“We… we won’t be safe until the Blue Fairy has been stopped.” Belle said, once she had cleared her throat.

“I guess we’ve got some added incentive to make sure she is stopped, then.” Robert replied. She gave a brief smile at his use of we, and he noticed, smiling back and pulling her close.

“We’re good, now, yes?” He asked, voice muffled by her hair. “No more secrets? Because I love you, I maybe love you more now I know who you are and what you’ve done. It’s a miracle you stuck with me after learning who I was.”

She pulled back, reaching a hand up to cup his cheek. “It’s no miracle, Robert, you are still the man I love. You always have been, you always will be.”

He smiled, and suddenly held her close once again. “Oh my god. You rescued my son. You rescued my son!” He gave a bark of laughter, again muffled by her hair, and she held him close with a smile, nodding against his shoulder. He nuzzled her hair, whispering his thanks and his love as he held her close.

After a while of comforting each other with their closeness, Belle pulled back once more, a smile on her face.

“So… what now?” she asked.

“Well, defeating Blue to safeguard the community from breaking the code, I guess. But that’s a job for tomorrow.” He looked her up and down, as well as himself. “For now, I think a shower would be a good idea. These costumes certainly aren’t fit for another outing, what do you say.”

“A shower sounds excellent,” she said with a smile, as they stood and made their way to the bathroom together, and she stole a gentle kiss from his lips before preceding him inside. “And you’re right. Jefferson’s going to kill us!”


	24. The Elder Alliance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few more things to sort out before the raid...

They were right about Jefferson’s adverse reaction to the damage their costumes had taken.

“I spent a good day’s work on each of these!” he exclaimed. “What on earth happened? You guys weren’t scheduled to go battling in these, I thought you were laying low and making allies!” He ran the burned edge of the remains of Belle’s costume through his fingers mournfully.

“The Queens of Darkness were hired by Blue to attack us so she could try to discover our identities.” Belle replied. “Oh, and before you ask, she didn’t entirely succeed, but the Spinner now knows who I am.”

He looked between them with renewed interest. “Oh?” He raised an eyebrow, examining their expressions. “I take it that that revelation didn’t go down too terribly, given you’re here together?” He smiled when Belle inclined her head to indicate he was right, Robert giving Jefferson a stony glare.

“While I’m sure you’re fascinated by what’s going on with our private lives, suffice to say we’re not here for tea and a gossip, Jeff. Can you make us some more costumes before our break in? We’re going to need them.”

Jefferson rolled his eyes at Robert’s businesslike manner, but nodded. “I’ve been working on spare battle costumes for the pair of you, a lot more sturdy than these ones. Let me fetch them…”

Their new costumes were indeed a lot more sturdy, leather and reinforced layers of cotton stitched together into skintight suits.

They were also matching.

The glares the pair of them turned on Jefferson were matching in the levels of murder promised in their eyes.

Jefferson raised his hands in a placating gesture at their glares, smiling weakly.

“What? I figured it out a while back, and then you two started working together. Whyever not?”

They exchanged a look, then Robert started to speak.

“Jefferson, if we go out in these costumes, we will forevermore be associated with one another. Whether this goes well or badly, if we both survive it could have consequences for our later careers, for our reputations within the hero or villain communities. If Thorn is seen to be working with me, she will be labelled a villain, whether we win or lose; but despite what the media says, the villain community will not be so forgetting of what heroic acts she has done. She won’t survive for long within the villain community, from my experience with former heroes turned villains.”

Belle nodded. She didn’t like it, but Robert was right. They had talked for a long time the evening before after their shared shower about how their alliance would pan out after Blue was defeated, and decided it would be better for them to reassume their former roles on opposing sides of the super community. The heroes would never trust Robert in the way she trusted him, and the villains would rip any traitors they came across to shreds, no matter what side they were on. It would be safer that way, and they could still spend their lives outside their jobs together.

Jefferson looked slightly disappointed that they wouldn’t be wearing the costumes, but Belle stopped him before he took them away.

“Could… could we have these costumes to keep anyway? I mean, as long as we coordinate to not wear them too often or at the same time then I’m sure no-one’s going to notice.”

Jefferson brightened up at her words. “Okay, then. I think I’ve got a spare one of the Spinner’s costumes in the back…” He shot off into one of the rooms off the haberdashery, and she turned to see Robert watching her with interest and a touch of admiration.

“What?” She asked, with a chuckle and a smile.

He pulled her into a hug. “You never cease to amaze me, you know that, right?” He muttered in her ear as they held each other close, Jefferson waiting at the door until they pulled apart before he came in to give them the other costume.

 

***

 

It took a week for her to persuade him that they really needed to get her mother in on the plan, after several meetings and several refusals of help from a variety of supers around the city, both hero and villain alike. Even though he had agreed to the meeting, as they sat in the car outside her mother’s house in their civvies, he was adjusting his tie nervously.

“What’s wrong?” She asked as he redid the tie for the fourth time since that morning.

He dropped his hands from his tie with a sigh. “I’m just nervous at how she’s going to react when she and your father learn who I am, Belle. I mean, how’s this conversation going to go? ‘Hello, I’m your long time former arch nemesis, I am now dating your daughter and have caused her significant emotional distress over the last few months unintentionally, and now we need your help to imprison your former boss.’ Yes, that is going to go down oh so well.” The sarcasm lacing his voice was tinged with nerves, and she cupped his cheek with a hand to make him look at her.

“It’s going to go fine, Robert. Mother always said you were one of her better nemeses, and you do have saving her life once to tip the odds in your favour. And I will be there every step of the way to stop this going pear-shaped.” She drew him in for a kiss, and the tension in his shoulders lessened at the touch of her lips. He drew back to give her a smile and a nod to acknowledge her help in calming him down before finishing readjusting his tie and getting out the car, cane in hand.

Her father was the one to open the door, giving Robert a gruff hello and Belle a one armed hug as he held the door open to let them inside. She wondered how long his cordial friendliness towards Robert would last when she explained to them who he was, but brushed that thought aside as her mother came into the room and saw the pair of them.

She looked at Robert carefully, eyes tracing up and down before she folded her arms. “I get the feeling we have met before?” She asked, suspicion lacing her voice.

“Indeed we have, Rose.” He said gently, quietly.

Her mouth opened in shock, and she walked over at some speed to catch him into a hug.

“I thought so! I thought it was you!” Belle’s mother said, a certain happy fondness lacing her voice.

Robert’s hand that wasn’t on his cane came up to pat her back awkwardly. “How on earth…?”

She pulled back from the hug, releasing him so he could stagger and regain his balance.

“Well, I may have done a little research about the supervillain who I got on well with and who saved my life after I retired, and I may have a contact within the police who gave me some information which led me to believe that the Dark One had a limp and a son who went missing and recently went into witness protection. And I may have kept tabs on you for a while after that, though I couldn’t be sure it was definitely the same Robert Gold my daughter moved in and started dating with who used to be the Dark One. The name certainly suits you, by the way!” The smile on her mother’s face seemed to throw Robert completely, who nodded and leaned on Belle a little for support.

“Right.” He said, in a slightly confused voice. “And… you’re still okay with me dating Belle?” He asked, uncertainty tinging his voice.

“I’m perfectly fine with it.” Belle’s mother replied. “She’s a big girl, she knows how to defend herself, and she’s got a level head on her shoulders. She could do worse than a villain turned neutral super, trust me.”

Belle ran a hand across her face. “Are we really going to bring up the past douchebag boyfriends thing, mum?” She asked with exasperation as her parents ushered them through to the sitting room.

Her mother laughed in response, directing the two of them to share a sofa while she and Belle’s father took the other. “Oh, I’m not that cruel, sweetheart, don’t worry.” She and her daughter shared a fond look before Belle’s mother sat forward again, expression suddenly all business.

“Now, I take it you didn’t bring your boyfriend here to meet a former arch nemesis purely for kicks, am I correct?” Robert and Belle sat up on the sofas at her words and expression, a look designed to search the face for information, inquiring and investigating, a look Belle had learned how to use on occasion. Robert cleared his throat.

“We need your help, Rose.” Robert said. “Do you remember the Blue Fairy?” He paused, waited for the nod from Belle’s mother before continuing. “She’s breaking the code. She’s removing supers’ masks in fights, trying to take pictures of their faces so she can find their identities and give that information to villains with less scruples about murdering people in their sleep. She kidnapped my son, held him hostage for ten years. She tried to get mine and Belle’s identities, but we managed to stop her before she could get photos of our identities.”

“Which is, incidently, how we worked out who each other was.” Belle interrupted, and held his hand as a show of solidarity before picking up the story. “She kidnapped me too- that was the reason I needed that alibi a few weeks back-” (Robert’s expression sudddenly cleared with understanding) “- and wants to get the identities of any super against her, villain or hero alike. She needs to be stopped before there are no more supers left to oppose her, and so we can live in safety.”

“We need to get into the superhero HQ.” Robert continued for her. “We’ve got most of the people we need to achieve all our objectives while inside, but we need one more person to even out the numbers and make sure we can all get in and out safely. We need someone we can trust.”

Belle’s mother nodded. “I can do it.”

Belle reached a hand out to her mother with a smile as a gesture of thanks, but also uncertainty. “Are you sure, mum? It’d be a lot of stress on your leg…”

She shrugged in reply. “I’ve been working on it, plenty of physiotherapy, it’s a lot better than it was ten years ago. And I expect Mr Dark One here-” She gestured to Robert with a wave of a hand- “has some method of getting around his leg injury problems, am I correct?”

He nodded. “It wouldn’t take long to make a brace for your leg to help redistribute the weight. It really helps a lot. I can get it made within a week.”

Belle’s mother nodded. “Awesome. I’ll gladly help you bring her down then, Belle, Dark One. I won’t let her destroy the happiness of my daughter and those she loves.” She stood, and showed Belle and Robert to the door.

“I think I’ve still got my old costume around, and I think I should be able to talk Granny Lucas into helping us out. We still meet for coffee occasionally.”

“That would be excellent, Rose. Thank you, and please let us know if there’s anything else we can do in return.” Robert replied as they paused on the threshold.

“Then hand a message into city hall- the superhero Rose has come out of retirement.”


	25. The Final Battle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The raid finally occurs...

True to her mother’s word, Granny Lucas was quite willing to help them out covertly. Within a week they received a bag of power blocking bracelets, passed to Belle by Ruby during a walk down the street to Gold’s pawn shop again. A few days after that, and it came to the evening in which they would be breaking in.

The six met up in an alleyway a few blocks from the library. Belle and Robert arrived first, Baelfire in his phoenix costume arrived a few seconds later, Snow and Charming flew in a few minutes after that, and Rose arrived last, causing Baelfire to startle when she appeared as if out of thin air.

“Is this everyone?” She asked, peering at the faces around the group. “Shall we all introduce ourselves?”

After a brief reciting of names, Baelfire and Robert concentrated, and soon enough the air shimmered around the party, indicating their concealment.

“Phoenix and I will need people to guide us so we don’t bump into anything. We’re going to need to concentrate to keep everyone concealed for the entire journey.” Robert said through gritted teeth, and soon Belle was leading Robert and Snow was leading Baelfire as they walked together to the library, staying close together as they navigated the moonlit streets.

Thankfully, Belle still had the key to the library, and the group were soon inside, Belle locking the door behind them and leaving the key just in front for when they came back. Getting into the lift was a squash, but the shimmering air around them was a comfort as Baelfire and Robert kept them concealed.

They arrived at the HQ without consequence, and in the deserted foyer, split into two groups of three to head in opposite directions- Belle, Robert and Charming in one group, Rose, Baelfire and Snow in the other, the former group headed up to Blue’s office, while the latter group went below ground to find the vaults and the notes Belle needed destroyed.

Thankfully there weren’t many supers milling around on their journey. The superhero HQ was open and operational at all hours of the day, but understandably less staffed in the evenings and overnight, with most supers either sleeping or patrolling the streets in those nighttime hours. They made it up to the fifth floor without incident, the illusion Robert held around them stopping the few supers they did come across from noticing them, Charming’s pass codes letting them take the lifts up and get through a good few doors.

Blue’s door was gently ajar, her voice coming from inside, the yelling into what must be a phone drifting out into the deserted corridor.

“I don’t _care_ that you think Rose is a superhero! I have an inside source that she’s working with her former Nemesis, the Dark One, and that makes her our enemy, no matter what good she’s done, no matter that she saved the life of your little sister ten years ago! Find her, and find me who she really is, or you are fired! Is that understood?!” They heard a crunching sound as said phone was thrown unceremoniously across the room, smashing against one of the steel walls, the small tinny voice within suddenly cut off by the breaking apart of circuits and plastic.

Belle slowed time to a stop as Robert and Charming waited outside. The door was quickly pushed open at her touch, and she walked inside the office. It was somehow quite amusing to see the frozen murderous expression on Blue’s face, her arm still completing the motion from throwing the phone a matter of seconds earlier, an she slipped around her to look in the drawers. The metal cabinets held nothing, but the desk was a different story, thumbprint scanners sitting on the openings.

She touched one curiously, and a zap of electricity abruptly sent time spiraling out of her control. Blue turned, and slammed the power blocking cuff on her desk over Belle’s arm just as Robert and Charming burst into the room, her grip on Belle’s arm like a vice.

Robert sorted that with a gesture. Blue was thrown across the room and pinned to one of the walls just as alarms started blaring through the building, a screeching in their ears as Charming crossed the room to unlock the bracelet around Belle’s wrist as Robert kept Blue pinned to the wall as she struggled to break free.

“Why would you do this, Blue?” Robert asked, quietly. “Why would you try and pull our lives apart? We play this game, we understand the consequences. What happened?”

“You happened! You villains pulled so many families apart by your secret keeping and sneaking about! My husband left me because I couldn’t tell him who I was, what I do. What I do, I do to keep people like him safe!”

“You’re not going to keep him safe by letting people assassinate supers, Blue! It’s not your fault he wasn’t trusting enough to stay by your side, but you could have moved on. There is more to life than revenge driven by a lack of love in your life. It’s taken me ten years to realise that, but I am a far better person for it!”

Belle chose that moment to stagger over, closing the power blocking bracelet from her pocket over Blue’s wrist. Robert let her descend to the ground slowly, gently, despite her angry shrill screeching.

It was Charming who figured out how to open the desk, dragging a now powerless Blue over so she could press a thumb to each of the drawer’s thumbprint scanners in succession, opening it to their gaze.

Belle was the one to rifle through the desk, but as she worked she heard Blue pleading with Charming in the background as he stopped her from running out the room, a hand casually catching her wrist in an unbreakable grip.

“Why would you do this, Charming? Why would you side with the Dark One of all people? I know what he did to your twin brother, trading him away to let him be killed by Maleficent. Why?”

“Because people change, Blue.” He replied quietly, as Belle pulled out image after image of unmasked villains from folders, all carefully alphabetised. “Villains are not villains forever, the same with heroes. That man-” He gestured to Robert- “is not the Dark One we remember from all those years ago, and I think I know the reason why, from working with him. He has people he cares for, people he would move planets and destroy stars for. Would you not move the sun and moon for the people you truly love? But Blue, if you cannot remember that even the people you hate are human too, then you are the villain, not they.”

Tears were running from Blue’s eyes as they finished looking through the folders, taking pictures of what they found, of invoices of money sent to villains to assassinate heroes and villains alike, of the unmasked faces of deceased heroes and villains alike going back (to Belle’s horror) at least ten years.

They decided to leave Blue where she was, tying her to her desk, and they turned to leave, but her shout stopped them.

“Wait!”

They turned back to look through the office door.

“Do you know what those alarms are?” She said, a cruel smile twisting on her face.

“They’re the alarms to warn supers that the security of HQ has been breached, that they need to be looking for intruders.” Belle replied, the puzzled tone of her voice drifting to wary as she saw the wild look on Blue’s face, and the shaking of Blue’s head in response sent a chill wave of terror through her spine.

“Nuh uh.” She breathed. “After such a high-profile superhero went rogue, I decided to change things up a bit. I planted explosives through the building. That siren is a five minute warning of the impending explosion. Of course, I only informed the supers I could trust of this little change- certainly not your little _friends_ amongst the junior ranks. It’s the only way to flush out the vermin, even if it means I will lose my life in the process.” Her voice was cold and manic and chilling, and as horror dawned on their faces, Belle slammed time to a halt, her eyes tracking to the clock.

How long had it been since the sirens started?

How long had it _been_ since the sirens started?

4 minutes, 50 seconds.

She had ten seconds to work with.

She had 5 people to carry out the building, if not more.

Thankfully, she knew where the emergency stairs were; it was designed so it was easier to get out the building than to get in. Her mother, if notified, could get Bae and Snow out at her speeds, though it might be slightly harder given she had a bad leg.

She let time go again, dialled the number on her phone she kept for the most dire of emergencies, the one going to the phone now in her mother’s pocket, set to send the sound of her voice straight through without delay, without dialling.

“Get them out now!” She yelled down the phone as Blue started to laugh, before stopping time again.

She now only had two people to carry down the stairs, one who she knew she could carry, one who could easily bench press her weight.

A quick mental calculation showed she would have approximately an extra half hour of time to get them both out at that level of activity, but carrying Charming down 5 flights of stairs and out the front hall would probably exhaust her. She would take Robert out first, and then see if she found anyone else on the way still in the building before getting Blue and Charming out.

Robert’s weight was a lot more difficult to carry when he wasn’t given warning of it first, limbs stiff like a corpse making it difficult to hold him in anything other than a fireman’s lift, the stairs a challenge to navigate, but she estimated ten minutes had passed subjectively as she walked through the foyer and out the front doors to gently set him down, laying across a bench across the square in front of the building before running back inside.

The stairs were a challenge, her breath heavy as she returned to outside Blue’s office, glancing at the clock before she went to pick Blue up, the action stopping her.

The clock said 3 seconds left.

She wouldn’t have the time to come back at the rate time was passing for her subjectively.

She didn’t hesitate; turning, she ripped the power blocking cuff from Blue’s arm so she would survive the explosion, hefting Charming over her shoulder and making for the stairs.

Her walk this time was a lot slower; she was staggering down the stairs haphazardly, bouncing herself off the walls to propel herself down the next set of steps, a heat starting to drift through the foyer as she staggered unsteadily through with Charming on her shoulder, a red light starting to flicker to life behind her as she desperately tried to keep a hold on time for long enough to reach the bench.

The bench, eventually, arrived, the bodies of Baelfire and Snow laying beside it, Robert sitting up on the bench, and her mother looking at the superhero HQ behind her with an expression of horror dawning on her face.

She put Charming down on the ground, and then time slipped out of her grip. She was shoved to the ground by the wave of heat and light and sound, the distant noise of her mother and Robert rushing to pick her up off the pavement not quite reaching her ears as she drifted in and out of consciousness, and eventually, when Robert’s eyes met hers, she finally let go of that too, and everything went black.


	26. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath...

She didn’t wake up for a good couple of days, Robert sitting at her bedside when she finally did come to in her old bedroom at her parent’s house, patiently waiting with papers from the last two days and an explanation of what had happened.

Blue had, inevitably, been arrested by police when the pictures of the files she had kept of unmasked supers had inevitably leaked onto the internet, Robert having patiently posted them to social media websites while maintaining a vigil by her bedside. Interestingly, they hadn’t managed to pin the building explosion on her, given there were too many supers advocating that she had had nothing to do with that. The police were currently blaming the Spinner; despite being seen with superheroes, he still was the only supervillain to be seen near the former HQ at the time of the explosion, and whyever would a superhero such as Blue blow up her own headquarters?

Despite not being able to reach the vault, the documents and computer Belle had used were destroyed in the explosion too, and when Rose had recieved Belle’s message she had taken Snow and Baelfire out of the building immediately, even though they hadn’t reached the vaults at that point in time. Their planned system of the emergency phone had, inevitably, saved their lives.

Belle and her mother, Snow and Charming, even Baelfire (as the Phoenix) were now being hailed as heroes for exposing Blue’s conspiracy. Blue had escaped the explosion, but the police managed to catch her soon afterwards; the explosion hadn’t killed her, but had knocked her out long enough that the police were on the scene when the news of what she had done leaked online, allowing them to arrest her without incident. Despite Belle’s companion’s protests, however, they had still tried to arrest Robert- it looked like he would still be on the run from the police in his super costume for a long while to come.

It was a few days before she returned to the former superhero HQ with Robert, and they sat together invisibly on a nearby roof to watch the leftover rubble be slowly removed by construction workers. The city council had gotten together funds to replace it remarkably quickly, thanks to Robert’s anonymous intervention.

“Do you ever think we’re not going to be on opposite sides of this fight, my love?” Belle asked, a world weary tone in her voice. She was recovered from the exhaustion that had set in from the rescuing of Robert and Charming, a visit from Dr Whale curing her other injuries, but the continued hunt for Robert in the papers and on the TV was wearing at her, today especially of all days.

“Maybe, sweetheart, but maybe not.” He replied. “I don’t know if I’m going to remain the Spinner; too many people now associate that name with the Dark One, too many people hunt me when all I want to do now is help protect the people I love.”

“I’m sure Jefferson would love to design you a new costume.” She replied, snuggling into the arm around her shoulders. He wore his costume and the scaly illusion just in case anyone could detect them despite the invisibility, but she suspected it was comforting to him to have the illusion, the mask, to protect him while he was sitting on a roof where no normal person would ever dream of being able to sit.

He shook his head, before pressing a kiss to her hair. “I can help you out more if people know I’m the Dark One. We’re going to need to track down anyone who was working with Blue, who thought that this was an okay thing to do. You can’t do that if I don’t have my ear to the ground within the villain community.”

She sighed, and gave a nod. “You’re right. We’ll get nowhere if we don’t have influence on both sides of the spectrum, as it were.” She snaked an arm around his back to cuddle him closer, despite the roughness of his coat. “At least we’ve no more secrets to drive us apart any more. No more hiding.”

He pulled her closer. “I might hide from the world, but I will never hide from you ever again, my love.” He pressed another kiss to her hair before whispering in her ear, “Shall we go home? I’ve got some secrets to show you regarding how much I love you…”

She lifted her head to smile at him and kiss him, before he gathered her up in his arms, and they floated invisibly through the sky, back to the safety of home and comfort and the warmth of each other’s embrace.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Find me over on tumblr at hedwighood. This was my NaNoWriMo for 2015, but I may be inclined to write deleted and extended scenes on prompting. All comments and kudos appreciated! :-)


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